
Book__Jl_L____ 

i ? 1 \ 









PREFACE. 



Being now fifty-one years old, and little likely to change 
my mind hereafter on any important subject of thought 
(unless through weakness of age), I wish to publish a 
connected series of such parts of my works as now seem 
to me right, and likely to be of permanent use. In 
doing so I shall omit much, but not attempt to mend 
what I think worth reprinting. A young man neces- 
sarily writes otherwise than an old one, and it would be 
v/orse than wasted time to try to recast the juvenile 
language : nor is it to be thought that I am ashamed 
even of what I cancel ; for great part of my earlier work 
was rapidly written for temporary purposes, and is now 
unnecessary, though true, even to truism. What I wrote 
about religion, was, on the contrary, painstaking, and, 
I think, forcible, as compared with most religious writ- 
ing ; especially in its frankness and fearlessness : but it 
was wholly mistaken ; for I had been educated in the 
doctrines of a narrow sect, and had read history as ob- 
liquely as sectarians necessarily must. 



Ill 



iv PEEFACE. -^ \ ^ 

Mingled among tliese either unnecessary or erroneous 
statements, I find, indeed, some that might be still of 
value ; but these, in my earlier books, disfigured by af- 
fected language, partly through the desire to be thought 
a fine writer, and partly, as in the second volume of 
Modern Painters, in the notion of returning as far as I 
could to what I thought the better style of old English 
literature, especially to that of my then favourite, in 
prose, Richard Hooker. 

For these reasons, though, as respects either art, pol- 
icy, or morality as distinct from religion, I not only still 
hold, but would even wish strongly to re-affirm the sub- 
stance of what I said in my earliest books, I shall re- 
print scarcely anything in this series out of the first 
and second volumes of Modern Painters ; and shall omit 
much of the Seven Lamps and Stones of Venice : but all 
my books written within the last fifteen years will be 
republished without change, as new editions of them 
are called for, with here and there perhaps an addi- 
tional note, and having their text divided, for conven- 
ient reference, into paragraphs consecutive through 
each volume. I shall also throw together the shorter 
fragments that bear on each other, and fill in vv^ith such 
unprinted lectures or studies as seem to me worth pre- 

Transfer 

Engineers School LI by, 

•''. : June 29, 1931 



PREFACE. 



serving, so as to keep the volumes, on an average, com- 
posed of about a hundred leaves each. 

The first book of which a new edition is required 
chances to be Sesame and Lilies, from which I now de- 
tach the old preface, about the Alps, for use elsewhere ; 
and to which I add a lecture given in Ireland on a sub- 
ject closely connected with that of the book itself. I 
am glad that it should be the first of the complete 
series, for many reasons ; though in now looking over 
these two lectures, I am painfully struck by the waste 
of good work in them. They cost me much thought, 
and much strong emotion ; but it was foolish to sup- 
pose that I could rouse my audiences in a little while 
to any sympathy with the temper into which I had 
brought myself by years of thinking over subjects full 
of pain ; while, if I missed my purpose at the time, it 
was little to be hoped I could attain it afterwards; 
since phrases written for oral delivery become ineffec- 
tive when quietly read. Yet I should only take away 
what good is in them if I tried to translate them into 
the language of books ; nor, indeed, could I at all have 
done so at the time of their delivery, my thoughts then 
habitually and impatiently putting themselves into 
forms fit only for emphatic speech : and thus I am 



VI PREFACE. 

startled, in my review of them, to find that, though 
there is much, (forgive me the impertinence) which 
seems to me accurately and energetically said, there is 
scarcely anything put in a form to be generally convinc- 
ing, or even easily intelligible ; and I can well imagine 
a reader laying down the book without being at all 
moved by it, still less guided, to any definite course of 
action. 

I think, however, if I now say briefly and clearly 
what I meant my hearers to understand, and what I 
wanted, and still would fain have, them to do, there 
may afterwards be found some better service in the 
passionately written text. 

The first Lecture says, or tries to say, that, life being 
very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to 
waste none of them in reading valueless books; and 
that valuable books should, in a civilized country, be 
within the reach of every one, printed in excellent form, 
for a just price ; but not in any vile, vulgar, or, by 
reason of smallness of type, physically injurious form, 
at a vile price. For we none of us need many books, and 
those which we need ought to be clearly printed, on the 
best paper, and strongly bound. And though we are, 
indeed, now, a wretched and poverty-struck nation, and 



PREFACE. Vll 



hardly able to keep soul and body together, still, as 
no person in decent circumstances would put on his 
table confessedly bad wine, or bad meat, without being 
ashamed, so he need not have on his shelves ill-printed 
or loosely and wretchedly-stitched books ; for, though 
few can be rich, yet every man who honestly exerts 
himself may, I think, still provide, for himself and his 
family, good shoes, good gloves, strong harness for his 
cart or carriage horses, and stout leather binding for 
his books. And I would urge upon every young man, 
as the beginning of his due and vvdse provision for his 
household, to obtain as soon as he can, by the severest 
economy, a restricted, serviceable, and steadily — how- 
ever slowly — increasing, series of books for use through 
life ; making his little library, of all the furniture in his 
room, the most studied and decorative piece ; every 
volume having its assigned place, like a little statue in 
its niche, and one of the earliest and strictest lessons 
to the children of the house being how to turn the 
pages of their own literary possessions lightly and de- 
liberately, with no chance of tearing or dogs' ears. 

That is my notion of the founding of King's Treas- 
uries ; and the first Lecture is intended to show some- 
what the use and preciousness of their treasures : but 



Vlll PREFACE. 

the two following ones have wider scope, being written 
in the hope of awakening the youth of England, so far 
as my poor words might have any power with them, to 
take some thought of the purposes of the life into which 
they are entering, and the nature of the world they 
have to conquer. 

These two lectures are fragmentary and ill-arranged, 
but not, I think, diffuse or much compressible. The 
entire gist and conclusion of them, however, is in the 
last six paragraphs, 135 to the end, of the third lecture, 
which I would beg the reader to look over not once nor 
twice (rather than any other part of the book), for they 
contain the best expression I have yet been able to put 
in words of v/hat, so far as is within my power, I mean 
henceforward both to do myself, and to plead with all 
over whom I have any influence, to do also according to 
their means : the letters begun on the first day of this 
year, to the workmen of England, having the object of 
originating, if possible, this movement among them, in 
true alliance with whatever trustworthy element of help 
they can find in the higher classes. After these para- 
graphs, let me ask you to read, by the fiery light of 
recent events, the fable at p. 142 (§ 117), and then §§ 
129 — 131 ; and observe, my statement respecting the 



PEEFACE. IX 

famine at Orissa is not rhetorical, but certified by offi- 
cial documents as within the truth. Five hundred thou- 
sand persons, at least, died by starvation in our British 
dominions, wholly in consequence of carelessness and 
want of forethought. Keep that well in your memory ; 
and note it as the best possible illustration of modern 
political economy in true practice, and of the relations 
it has accomplished between Supply and Demand. 
Then begin the second lecture, and all will read clear 
enough, I think, to the end; only, since that second 
lecture was written, questions have arisen respecting 
the education and claims of women which have greatly 
troubled simple minds and excited restless ones. I am 
sometimes asked my thoughts on this matter, and I 
suppose that some girl readers of the second lecture 
may at the end of it desire to be told summarily what 
I would have them do and desire in the present state 
of things. This, then, is what I would say to any girl 
who had confidence enough in me to believe what I 
told her, or do what I ask her. 

First, be quite sure of one thing, that, however much 
you may know, and whatever advantages you may pos- 
sess, and however good you may be, you have not been 
singled out, by the God who made you, from all the 



X PEEFACE. 

other girls in the world, to be especially informed re- 
specting His own nature and character. You have not 
been born in a luminous point upon the surface of the 
globe, where a perfect theology might be expounded to 
you from your youth up, and where everything you 
were taught would be true, and everything that was en- 
forced upon you, right. Of all the insolent, all the 
foolish persuasions that by any chance could enter and 
hold your empty little heart, this is the proudest and 
foolishest, — that you have been so much the darling of 
the Heavens, and favourite of the Fates, as to be born 
in the very nick of time, and in the punctual place, 
when and where pure Divine truth had been sifted 
•^from the errors of the Nations ; and that your papa had 
been providentially disposed to buy a house in the 
convenient neighbourhood of the steeple, under which 
that Immaculate and final verity would be beautifully 
proclaimed. Do not think it, child ; it is not so. This, 
on the contrary, is the fact, — unpleasant you may think 
it; pleasant, it seems to me, — that you, with all your 
pretty dresses, and dainty looks, and kindly thoughts, 
and saintly aspirations, are not one whit more thought 
of or loved by the great Maker and Master than any 
poor little red, black, or blue savage, running wild in 



PKEFACE. XI 



the pestilent woods, or naked on the hot sands of the 
earth : and that, of the two, you probably know less 
about God than she does ; the only difference being 
that she thinks little of Him that is right, and you, 
much that is wrong. 

That, then, is the first thing to make sure of ;— that 
you are not yet perfectly well informed on the most 
abstruse of all possible subjects, and that, if you care 
to behave with modesty or propriety, you had better be 
silent about it. 

The second thing which you may make sure of is, 
that however good you may be, you have faults ; that 
however dull you may be, you can find out what some 
of them are ; and that however slight they may be, you 
had better make some — not too painful, but patient- 
effort to get quit of them. And so far as you have 
confidence in me at all, trust me for this, that how 
many soever you may find or fancy your faults to be, 
there are only two that are of real consequence, — Idle- 
ness and Cruelty. Perhaps you may be proud. Well, 
we can get much good out of pride, if only it be not 
religious. Perhaps you may be vain : it is highly 
probable ; and very pleasant for the people who like to 
praise you. Perhaps you are a little envious : that is 



xii PREFACE. 

really very shocking ; but tlien — so is eyerybody else. 
Perhaps, also, you are a little malicious, which I am 
truly concerned to hear, but should probably only the 
more, if I knew you, enjoy your conversation. But 
whatever else you may be, you must not be useless, 
and you must not be cruel. If there is any one point 
which, in six thousand years of thinking about right 
and wrong, wise and good men have agreed upon, or 
successively by experience discovered, it is that God 
dislikes idle and cruel people more than any other ; — 
that His first order is, " Work while you have light ; " 
and His second, " Be merciful v/hile you have mercy." 

" Work Avhile you have light," especially while you 
have the light of morning. There are few things more 
wonderful to me than that old people never tell young 
ones how precious their youth is. They sometimes 
sentimentally regret their own earlier days ; sometimes 
prudently forget them ; often foolishly rebuke the 
young, often more foolishly indulge, often most fool- 
ishly thwart and restrain ; but scarcely ever warn or 
watch them. Remember, then, that I, at least, have 
warned you, that the happiness of your life, and its 
power, and its part and rank in earth or in heaven, de- 
pend on the way you pass your days now. They are 



PBEFACE. Xlll 



not to be sad days ; far from that, the first duty of 
young people is to be delighted and delightful ; but 
they are to be in the deepest sense solemn days. 
There is no solemnity so deep, to a rightly-thinking crea- 
ture, as that of dawn. But not only in that beautiful 
sense, but in all their character and method, they are 
to be solemn days. Take your Latin dictionary, and 
look out " sollennis," and fix the sense of the word well 
in your mind, and remember that every day of your 
early life is ordaining irrevocably, for good or evil, the 
custom and practice of your soul ; ordaining either sa- 
cred customs of dear and lovely recurrence, or trench- 
ing deeper and deeper the furrows for seed of sorrow. 
Now, therefore, see that no day passes in which you do 
not make yourself a somewhat better creature ; and in 
order to do that, find out, first, what you are now. Do 
not think vaguely about it; take pen and paper, and 
write down as accurate a description of yourself as you 
can, with the date to it. If you dare not do so, find out 
why you dare not, and try to get strength of heart 
enough to look yourself fairly in the face, in mind as 
well as body. I do not doubt but that the mind is a 
less pleasant thing to look at than the face, and for 
that very reason it needs more looking at ; so always 



XIV PEEFACE. 

have two mirrors on your toilet table, and see that with 
proper care you dress body and mind before them 
daily. After the dressing is once over for the day, 
think no more about it : as your hair will blow about 
your ears, so your temper and thoughts will get ruffled 
with the day's work, and may need, sometimes, twice 
dressing ; but I don't want you to carry about a mental 
pocket-comb ; only to be smooth braided always in the 
morning. 

Write down then, frankly, what you are, or, at least, 
what you think yourself, not dwelling upon those inevi- 
table faults which I have just told you are of little con- 
sequence, and which the action of a right life will shake 
or smooth away ; but that you may determine to the 
best of your intelligence what you are good for, and 
can be made into. You will find that the mere resolve 
not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other 
people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve 
yourself. Thus, from the beginning, consider all your 
accomplishments as means of assistance to others ; read 
attentively, in this volume, paragraphs 74, 75, 19, and 
79, and you will understand what I mean, with respect 
to languages and music. In music especially you will 
soon find what personal benefit there is in being ser- 



PBEFACE. XV 

viceable : it is probable that, however limited jour 
powers, you have voice and ear enough to sustain a note 
of moderate compass in a concerted piece ;— that, then, 
IS the first thing to make sure you can do. Get your 
voice disciplined and clear, and think only of accuracy; 
never of effect or expression : if you have any soul 
worth expressing it will show itself in your singing ; 
but most likely there are very few feelings in you, at 
present, needing any particular expression; and the 
one thing you have to do is to make a clear-voiced lit- 
tle instrument of yourself, which other people can en- 
tirely depend upon for the note wanted. So, in draw- 
ing, as soon as you can set down the right shape of 
anything, and thereby explain its character to another 
person, or make the look of it clear and interesting to 
a child, you will begin to enjoy the art vividly for its 
own sake, and all your habits of mind and powers of 
memory will gain precision : but if you only try to 
make showy drawings for praise, or pretty ones for 
amusement, your drawing will have little or real inter- 
est for you, and no educational power whatever. 

Then, besides this more delicate work, resolve to do 
every day some that is useful in the vulgar sense. Learn 
first thoroughly the economy of the kitchen ; the good 



XVI PEEPACE. 

and bad qualities of every common article of food, and 
the simplest and best modes of their preparation : 
when yon have time, go and help in the cooking of 
poorer families, and show them how to make as much 
of everything as possible, and how to make little, nice ; 
coaxing and tempting them into tidy and pretty ways, 
and pleading for well-folded table-cloths, however 
coarse, and for a flower or two out of the garden to 
strew on them. If you manage to get a clean table- 
cloth, bright plates on it, and a good dish in the mid- 
dle, of your own cooking, you may ask leave to say a 
short grace ; and let your religious ministries be con- 
fined to that much for the present. 

Again, let a certain part of your day (as little as you 
choose, but not to be broken in upon) be set apart for 
making strong and pretty dresses for the poor. Learn 
the sound qualities of all useful stuffs, and make every- 
thing of the best you can get, whatever its price. I 
have many reasons for desiring you to do this, — too 
many to be told just now, — trust me, and be sure you 
get everything as good as can be : and if, in the vil- 
lainous state of moderate trade, you cannot get it good 
at any price, buy its raw material, and set some of the 
poor women about you to spin and weave, till you have 



PKEFACE. XVll 

got stuff that can be trusted : and then, every day, 
make some little piece of useful clothing, sewn with 
your own fingers as strongly as it can be stitched ; and 
embroider it or otherwise beautify it moderately with 
fine needlework, such as a girl may be proud of having 
done. And accumulate these things by you until you 
hear of some honest persons in need of clothing, which 
may often too sorrowfully be ; and, even though you 
should be deceived, and give them to the dishonest, and 
hear of their being at once taken to the pawnbroker's, 
never mind that, for the pawnbroker must sell them to 
some one who has need of them. That is no business 
of yours ; what concerns you is only that when you see 
a half-naked child, you should have good and fresh 
clothes to give it, if its parents will let it be taught to 
wear them. If they will not, consider how they came 
to be of such a mind, which it will be wholesome for 
you beyond most subjects of inquiry to ascertain. 
And after you have gone on doing this a little while, 
you will begin to understand the meaning of at least 
one chapter of your Bible, Proverbs xxxi., without 
need of any laboured comment, sermon, or meditation. 
In these, then (and of course in all minor ways be- 
sides, that you can discover in your own household), 



XTlll PBEFACE. 

jou must be to the best of totlt strength usefully em- 
ployed during the greater part of the day, so that yon 
may be able at the end of it to say, as proudly as any 
peasant, that yon have not eaten the bread of idleness. 
Then, secondly, I said, you are not to l)e cruel. Per- 
haps you think there is no chance of your being so ; 
and indeed I hope it is not likely that you should 
be deliberately unkind to any creature ; but unless 
you are deliberately kind to every creature, yon -will 
often be cruel to many. Cruel, partly through want of 
imagination (a, far rarer and weaker faculty in women 
than meni, and yet more, at the present day, through 
the subtle encouragement of your selfishness by the 
religions doctrine that all which we now suppose to be 
eyil will be brought to a good end ; doctrine practically 
issuing, not in less earnest efforts that the immediate 
unpleasantness may be averted from ourselves, but in 
our remaining satisfied in the contemplation of its ulti- 
mate objects, when it is inflicted on others. 

It is not likely that the more accurate methods of re- 
cent mental education will now long permit young people 
to grow up in the persuasion that, in any danger or dis- 
tress, they may expect to he themselves saved by the 
providence of God, while those around them are lost by 



PREFACE XIX 

His Improvidence : but they may be yet long restrained 
from rightly kind action, and long accustomed to endure 
both their own pain occasionally, and the pain of others 
always, with an unwise patience, by misconception of the 
eternal and incurable nature of real evil. Observe, there- 
fore, carefully in this matter ; there are degrees of pain, 
as degrees of faultfulness, which are altogether conquer- 
able, and which seem to be merely forms of wholesome 
trial or discipline. Your fingers tingle when you go out 
on a frosty morning, and are all the warmer afterwards ; 
your limbs are weary with wholesome work, and lie 
down in the pleasanter rest ; you are tried for a little 
while by having to wait for some promised good, and it 
is all the sweeter when it comes. But you cannot carry 
the trial j)ast a certain point. Let the cold fasten on 
your hand in an extreme degree, and your fingers will 
moulder from their sockets. Fatigue yourself, but 
once, to utter exhaustion, and to the end of life you 
shall not recover the former vigour of your frame. Let 
heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, and 
the heart loses its life forever. 

Now, the very definition of evil is in this irremediable- 
ness. It means sorrow, or sin, which end in death ; and 
assuredly, as far as we know, or can conceive, there are 



XX PREFACE. 

many conditions both of pain and sin which cannot but 
so end. Of course we are ignorant and blind creatures, 
and we cannot know what seeds of good may be in pres- 
ent suffering, or present crime ; but with what we can- 
not know, we are not concerned. It is conceivable that 
murderers and liars may in some distant world be ex- 
alted into a higher humanity than they could have 
reached without homicide or falsehood; but the con- 
tingency is not one by which our actions should be 
guided. There is, indeed, a better hope that the 
beggar, who lies at our gates in misery, may, within 
gates of pearl be comforted; but the Master, whose 
words are our only authority for thinking so, never 
Himself inflicted disease as a blessing, nor sent away 
the hungry unfed, or the wounded unhealed. 

Believe me, then, the only right principle of action 
here, is to consider good and evil as defined by our 
natural sense of both ; and to strive to promote the one, 
and to conquer the other, with as hearty endeavor as if 
there were, indeed, no other world than this. (Above 
all, get quit of the absurd idea that Heaven will inter- 
fere to correct great errors, while allowing its laws to 
take their course in punishing small ones. If you pre- 
pare a dish of food carelessly, you do not expect Provi- 



PBEFACE. XXI 

dence to make it palatable ; neither, if, through years 
of folly, you misguide your own life, need you expect 
Divine interference to bring round everything at last for 
the best. I tell you, positively, the world is not so con- 
stituted : the consequences of great mistakes are just as 
sure as those of small ones, and the happiness of your 
whole life, and of all the lives over which you have power, 
depends as literally on your own common sense and dis- 
cretion as the excellence and order of the feast of a day. 
Think carefully and bravely over these things, and 
you will find them true : having found them so, think 
also carefully over your own position in life. I assume 
that you belong to the middle or upper classes, and 
that you would shrink from descending into a lower 
sphere. You may fancy you would not : nay, if you are 
very good, strong-hearted, and romantic, perhaps you 
really would not ; but it is not wrong that you should. 
You have then, I suppose, good food, pretty rooms to 
live in, pretty dresses to wear, power of obtaining every 
rational and wholesome pleasure ; you are, moreover, 
probably gentle and grateful, and in the habit of every 
day thanking God for these things. But why do you 
thank Him ? Is it because, in these matters, as well as 
in your religious knowledge, you think He has made 



XXll PKEFACE. 

a favourite of you. Is the essential meaning of your 
thanksgiving, "Lord, I tliank thee that I am not as 
other girls are, not in that I fast twice in the week 
while they feast, but in that I feast seven times a week, 
while they fast," and are you quite sure this is a pleasing 
form of thanksgiving to your Heavenly Father? Sup- 
pose you saw one of your own true earthly sisters, Lucy 
or Emily, cast out of your mortal father's house, starv- 
ing, helpless, heartbroken; and that every morning 
when you went into your father's room, you said to him, 
" How good you are, father, to give me what you don't 
give Lucy," are you sure that, whatever anger your 
parent might have just cause for, against your sister, he 
would be pleased by that thanksgiving, or flattered by 
that praise ? Nay, are you even sure that you are so 
much the favourite : suppose that, all this while, he 
loves poor Lucy just as well as you, and is only trying 
you through her pain, and perhaps not angry with 
her in anywise, but deeply angry with you, and all 
the more for your thanksgivings? "Would it not be 
well that you should think, and earnestly too over 
this standing of yours : and all the more if you wish 
to believe that text, which clergymen so much dis- 
like preaching on, " How hardly shall thoy that have 



PREFACE. XXlll 

riclies enter into the Kingdom of God ? " You do not 
believe it now, or you would be less complacent in 
your state ; and you cannot believe it at all, until you 
know that the Kingdom of God means — " not meat 
and drink, but justice, peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost," nor until you know also that such joy is not 
by any means, necessarily, in going to church, or in 
singing hymns ; but may be joy in a dance, or joy in 
a jest, or joy in anything you have deserved to possess, 
or that you are willing to give ; but joy in nothing that 
separates you, as by any strange favour, from your 
fellow-creatures, that exalts you through their degra- 
dation — exempts you from their toil — or indulges you 
in time of their distress. 

Think, then, and some day, I believe, you will feel 
also — no morbid passion of pity such as would turn you 
into a black Sister of Charity, but the steady fire of 
perpetual kindness which will make you a bright one. 
I speak in no disparagement of them ; I know well how 
good the Sisters of Charity are, and how much we owe 
to them ; but all these professional pieties (except so 
far as distinction or association may be necessary for 
effectiveness of work) are in their spirit wrong, and in 
practice merely plaster the sores of disease that ought 



XXIV PEEFACE. 

never liave been permitted to exist ; encouraging at the 
same time tlie lierd of less excellent women in frivolity, 
by leading tliem to think that they must either be good 
up to the black standard, or cannot be good for any- 
thing. Wear a costume, by all means, if you like ; but 
let it be a cheerful and becoming one ; and be in your 
heart a Sister of Charity always, without either ^veiled 
or voluble declaration of it. 

As I pause, before ending my preface — thinking of 
one or two more points that are difficult to write of — 
I find a letter in The Times, from a French lady, which 
says all I want so beautifully, that I will print it just 
as it stands : 

SiE, — It is often said that one example is worth many 
sermons. Shall I be judged presumptuous if I point out 
one, which seems to me so striking just now, that, however 
painful, I cannot help dwelling upon it ? 

It is the share, the sad and large share, that French so- 
ciety and its recent habits of luxury, of expenses, of dress, 
of indulgence in every kind of extravagant dissipation, has 
to lay to its own door in its actual crisis of ruin, misery, 
and humiliation. If our menageres can be cited as an ex^ 
ample to English housewives, so, alas ! can other classes of 
our society be set up as an example — not to be followed. 

Bitter must be the feelings of many a French woman 



PREFACE. XXV. 

whose days of luxury and expensive habits are at an end: 
and whose bills of bygone splendour lie with a heavy weight 
on her conscience, if not on her purse ! 

With us the evil has spread high and low. Everywhere 
have the examples given by the highest ladies in the land 
been followed but too successfully. 

Every year did dress become more extravagant, entertain- 
ments more costly, expenses of every kind more considerable. 
Lower and lower became the tone of society, its good breed- 
ing, its delicacy. More and more were monde and demi-monde 
associated in newspaper accounts of fashionable doings, in 
scandalous gossip, on racecourses, in premieres representa- 
tions, in imitation of each other's costumes, mohiliers and slang. 

Living beyond one's means became habitual — almost neces- 
sary — for every one to keep up with, if not to go beyond, 
every one else. 

What the result of all this has been we now see in the 
wreck of our prosperity, in the downfall of all that seemed 
brightest and highest. 

Deeply and fearfully impressed by what my own country 
has incurred and is suffering, I cannot help feeling sorrowful 
when I see in England signs of our besetting sins appearing 
also. Paint and chignons, slang and vaudevilles, knowing 
" Anonymas " by name, and reading doubtfully moral novels, 
are in themselves small offences, although not many years 
ago they would have appeared very heinous ones, yet they 
are quick and tempting conveyances on a very dangerous 
high-road. 



XXVI PEEFACE. 

I would that all Englisliwomen knew how they are looked 
up to from abroad — what a high opinion, what honour and 
reverence we foreigners have for their principles, their truth- 
fulness, the fresh and pure innocence of their daughters, the 
healthy youthfulness of their lovely children. 

May I illustrate this by a short example which happened 
very near me? During the days of the emeutes of 1848, all 
the houses in Paris were being searched for firearms by the 
mob. The one I was living in contained none, as the master 
of the house repeatedly assured the furious and incredulous 
Republicans. They were going to lay violent hands on him, 
when his wife, an English lady, hearing the loud discussion, 
came bravely forward and assured them that no arms were 
concealed. ^'Vous etes anglaise, nous vous croyons; les 
anglaises disent toujours la verite," was the immediate 
answer, and the rioters quietly left. 

Now, Sir, shall I be accused of unjust criticism if, loving 
and admiring your country, as these lines will prove, certain 
new features strike me as painful discrepancies in English 
life? 

Far be it fi'om me to preach the contempt of all that can 
make life lovable and wholesomely pleasant. I love nothing 
better than to see a woman nice, neat, elegant, looking 
her best in the prettiest dress that her taste and purse can 
afford, or your bright, fresh young girls fearlessly and per- 
fectly sitting their horses, or adorning their houses as pretty 
[sic; it is not quite grammar, but it is better than if it were;] 
as care, trouble, and refinement can make them. 



PREFACE. XXVll 

It is the degree leyond that which to us has proved so 
fatal, and that I would our example could warn you from, 
as a small repayment for your hospitality and friendliness to 
us in our days of trouble. 

May Englishwomen accept this in a kindly spirit as a new- 
year's wish from 

Frekch Lady. 

Dec. 29. 

That, then, is the substance of what I would fain say 
convincingly, if it might be, to my girl friends ; at all 
events with certainty in my own mind that I was thus 
far a safe guide to them. 

For other and older readers it is needful I should 
write a few words more, respecting what opportunity I 
have had to judge, or right I have to speak, of such 
things ; for, indeed, too much of what I have said about 
women has been said in faith only. A wise and lovely 
English lady told me, when Sesame and Lilies first 
appeared, that she was sure the Sesame would be use- 
ful, but that in the Lilies I had been writing of what 
I knew nothing about. Which was in a measure too 
true, and also that it is more partial than my writings 
are usually : for as EUesmere spoke his speech on the 

intervention, not indeed otherwise than he felt, 

but yet altogether for the sake of Gretchen, so I wrote 



XXVlll PEEFACE. 

the Lilies to please one girl ; and were it not for wliat 
I remember of lier, and of few besides, should now 
perhaps recast some of the sentences in the Lilies in a 
very different tone : for as years have gone by, it has 
chanced to me, nntowardly in some respects, fortunately 
in others (because it enables me to read history more 
clearly), to see the utmost evil that is in women, while 
I have had but to believe the utmost good. The best 
women are indeed necessarily the most difficult to 
know; they are recognized chiefly in the happiness of 
their husbands and the nobleness of their children ; 
they are only to be divined, not discerned, by the 
stranger ; and, sometimes, seem almost helpless except 
in their homes ; yet without the help of one of them,* 
to whom this book is dedicated, the day would probably 
have come before now, when I should have written and 
thought no more. 

On the other hand, the fashion of the time renders 
whatever is forward, coarse or senseless, in feminine 
nature, too palpable to all men : — the weak picturesque- 
ness of my earlier writings brought me acquainted with 
much of their emptiest enthusiasm ; and the chances of 
later life gave me opportunities of watching women in 

* cbiXrj, 



PBEFACE. Xxix 

states of degradation and vindictiveness which opened 
to me the gloomiest secrets of Greek and Syrian tragedy. 
I have seen them betray their household charities to 
lust, their pledged love to devotion ; I have seen mothers 
dutiful to their children, as Medea ; and children dutiful 
to their parents, as the daughter of Herodias : but my 
trust is still unmoved in the preciousness of the natures 
that are so fatal in their error, and I leave the words 
of the Lilies unchanged ; believing, yet, that no man 
ever lived a right life who had not been chastened by a 
woman's love, strengthened by her courage, and guided 
by her discretion. 

"What I might myself have been, so helped, I rarely 
indulge in the idleness of thinking ; but what I am, 
since I take on me the function of a teacher, it is well 
that the reader should know, as far as I can tell him. 

Not an unjust person ; not an unkind one ; not a 
false one ; a lover of order, labor, and peace. That, 
it seems to me, is enough to give me right to say all I 
care to say on ethical subjects : more, I could only tell 
definitely through details of autobiography such as none 
but prosperous and (in the simple sense of the word) 
faultless, lives could justify ; — and mine has been neither. 
Yet, if any one, skilled in reading the torn manuscripts 



XXX PREFACE, 

of the human soul, cares for more intimate knowledge 
of me, he may have it by knowing with what persons in 
past history I have most sympathy. 

I will name three. 

In all that is strongest and deepest in me, — that fits 
me for my work, and gives light or shadow to my being, 
I have sympathy with Guido Guinicelli. 

In my constant natural temper, and thoughts of things 
and of people, with Marmontel. 

In my enforced and accidental temper, and thoughts 
of things and of people, with Dean Swift. 

Any one who can understand the natures of those 
three men, can understand mine; and having said so 
much, I am content to leave both life and work to be 
remembered or forgotten, as their uses may deserve. 

Denmark Hill, 

1st January, 1871. 



PREFACE-FIRST EDITION, 



A PASSAGE in the fifty-third page of this book, refer- 
ring to Alpine travellers, will fall harshly on the read- 
er's ear since it has been sorrowfully enforced by the 
deaths on Mont Cervin. I leave it, nevertheless, as it 
stood, for I do not now write unadvisedly, and think it 
wrong to cancel what has once been thoughtfully said ; 
but it must not so remain without a few added words. 

No blame ought to attach to the Alpine tourist for 
incurring danger. There is usually sufficient cause, and 
real reward, for all difficult work ; and even were it other- 
.wise, some experience of distinct peril, and the acquire- 
ment of habits of quick and calm action in its presence, 
are necessary elements, at some period of life, in the 
formation of manly character. The blame of bribing 
guides into danger is a singular accusation, in behalf of 
a people who have made mercenary soldiers of them- 
selves for centuries, without any one's thinking of giv- 
ing their fidelity better employment : though, indeed, 

xxxi 



XXXll PREFACE. 

the piece of work they did at the gate of the Tuileries, 
however useless, was no unwise one ; and their lion of 
flawed molasse at Lucerne, worthless in point of art 
though it be, is nevertheless a better reward than much 
pay ; and a better ornament to the old town than the 
Schweizer Hof, or flat new quay, for the promenade of 
those travellers who do not take guides into danger. 
The British public are however, at home, so innocent 
of ever buying their fellow creatures' lives, that we may 
justly expect them to be punctilious abroad ! They do 
not, perhaps, often calculate how many souls flit annu- 
ally, choked in fire-damp and sea-sand, from economi- 
cally watched shafts, and economically manned ships ; 
nor see the fiery ghosts writhe up out of every scuttle- 
ful of cheap coals : nor count how many threads of girl- 
ish life are cut off and woven annually by painted Fates, 
into breadths of ball-dresses ; or soaked away, like rot- 
ten hemp-fibre, in the inlet of Cocytus which overflows 
the Grassmarket where flesh is as grass. We need not, 
it seems to me, loudly blame any one for paying a guide 
to take a brave walk with him. Therefore, gentlemen 
of the Alpine Club, as much danger as you care to face, 
by all means ; but, if it please you, not so much talk of 
it. The real ground of reprehension of Alpine climb- 



PBEFACE. XXXlll 

ing is that, with less cause, it excites more yanity than 
any other athletic skill. A good horseman knows what it 
has cost to make him one ; everybody else knows it too, 
and knows that he is one ; he need not ride at a fence 
merely to showhis seat. But credit for practice in climb- 
ing can only be claimed after success, which, though per- 
haps accidental and unmerited, must yet be attained at 
all risks, or the shame of defeat borne with no evidence 
of the difficulties encountered. At this particular pe- 
riod, also, the distinction obtainable by first conquest of 
a peak is as tempting to a traveller as the discovery of 
a new element to a chemist, or of a new species to a nat- 
uralist. Vanity is never so keenly excited as by com- 
petitions which involve chance ; the course of science is 
continually arrested, and its nomenclature fatally con- 
fused, by the eagerness of even wise and able men to es- 
tablish their priority in an unimportant discovery, or ob- 
tain vested right to a syllable in a deformed word ; and 
many an otherwise sensible person will risk his life for 
the sake of a line in future guide-books, to the fact that 

" horn was first ascended by Mr. X. in the year 

" ; — never reflecting that of all the lines in the 



page, the one he has thus wrought for will be precisely 

the least interesting to the reader. 
3 



XXXIV PEEFACE. 

It is not therefore strange, however mucli to be re- 
gretted, that while no gentleman boasts in other cases 
of his sagacity or his courage — while no good soldier 
talks of the charge he led, nor any good sailor of the 
helm he held, — every man among the Alps seems to 
lose his senses and modesty with the fall of the barom- 
eter, and returns from his Nephelo-coccygia brandish- 
ing his ice-axe in everybody's face. Whatever the 
Alpine Club have done, or may yet accomplish, is a 
sincere thirst for mountain knowledge, and in happy 
sense of youthful strength and play of animal spirit, 
they have done, and will do, wisely and well ; but what- 
ever they are urged to by mere sting of competition and 
itch of praise, they will do, as all vain things must be 
done for ever, foolishly and ill. It is a strange proof 
of that absence of any real national love of science, of 
which I have had occasion to speak in the text, that no 
entire survey «. f the Alps has yet been made by properly 
qualified men; and that, except of the chain of Cha- 
mouni, no accurate maps exist, nor any complete geo- 
logical section even of that. But Mr. Reilly's survey of 
that central group, and the generally accurate informa- 
tion collected in the guide-book published by the Club, 
are honourable results of English adventure ; and it is 



PEEFACE. XXXV 

to be hoped that the continuance of such y/ork will 
gradually put an end to the vulgar excitement which 
looked upon the granite of the Alps only as an unoc- 
cupied advertisement wall for chalking names upon. 

Respecting the means of accomplishing such work with 
least risk, there was a sentence in the article of our lead- 
ing public journal, which deserves, and requires ex- 
pansion. 

" Their" (the Alpine Club's) " ropes must not break.'* 

Certainly not ! nor any one else's ropes, if they may be 
rendered unbreakable by honesty of make ; seeing that 
more lives hang by them on moving than on montionless 
seas. The records of the last gale at the Cape may teach 
us that economy in the manufacture of cables is not 
always a matter for exultation ; and, on the whole, it 
might even be well in an honest country, sending out, 
and up and down, various lines east and west, that 
nothing should break; banks, — words, — nor dredging 
tackle. 

Granting, however, such praise and such sphere of 
exertion as we thus justly may, to the spirit of adventure, 
there is one consequence of it, coming directly under 
my own cognizance, of which I cannot but speak with 
utter regret, — the loss, namely, of all real understanding 



XXXVl PBEFACE. 

of the character and beauty of Switzerland, by the 
country's being now regarded as half watering-place, 
half gymnasium. It is indeed true that under the 
influence of the pride which gives poignancy to the 
sensations which others cannot share with us (and a 
not unjustifiable zest to the pleasure which we have 
worked for), an ordinary traveller will usually observe 
and enjoy more on a difficult excursion than on an easy 
one ; and more in objects to which he is unaccustomed 
than in those with which he is familiar. He will notice 
with extreme interest that snow is white on the top of 
a hill in June, though he would have attached little 
importance to the same peculiarity in a wreath at the 
bottom of a hill in January. He will generally find 
more to admire in a cloud under his feet, than in one 
over his head ; and, oppressed by the monotony of a sky 
which is prevalently blue, will derive extraordinary 
satisfaction from its approximation to black. Add to 
such grounds of delight the aid given to the effect of 
whatever is impressive in the scenery of the high Alps, 
by the absence of ludicrous or degrading concomitants ; 
and it ceases to be surprising that Alpine excursionists 
should be greatly pleased, or that they should attribute 
their pleasure to some true and increased apprehension 



PREFACE. XXXVU 

of the nobleness of natural scenery. But no impression 
can be more false. The real beauty of the Alps is to be 
seen, and seen only, where all may see it, the child, the 
cripple, and the man of grey hairs. There is more true 
loveliness in a single glade of pasture shadowed by 
pine, or gleam of rocky brook, or inlet of unsullied lake 
among the lower Bernese and Savoyard hills, than in 
the entire field of jagged gneiss which crests the central 
ridge from the Shreckhorn to the Yiso. The valley of 
Cluse, through which unhappy travellers consent now 
to be invoiced, packed in baskets like fish, so only that 
they may cheaply reach, in the feverous haste which 
has become the law of their being, the glen of Chamouni 
whose every lovely foreground rock has now been 
broken up to build hotels for them, contains more 
beauty in half a league of it, than the entire valley they 
have devastated, and turned into a casino, did in its 
uninjured pride ; and that passage of the Jura by Olten 
(between Basle and Lucerne), which is by the modern 
tourist triumphantly effected through a tunnel in ten 
minutes, between two piggish trumpet grunts pro- 
clamatory of the ecstatic transit, used to show from 
every turn and sweep of its winding ascent, up which 
one sauntered, gathering wild-flowers, for half a happy 



XXXVlll PEEFACE. 

day, diviner aspects of the distant Alps than ever were 
achieved by toil of limb, or won by risk of life. 

There is indeed a healthy enjoyment both in engineers' 
work, and in school-boy's play ; the making and mend- 
ing of roads has its true enthusiasms, and I have still 
pleasure enough in mere scrambling to wonder not a 
little at the supreme gravity with which apes exercise 
their superior powers in that kind, as if profitless to 
them. But neither macadamisation, nor tunnelling, nor 
rope ladders, will ever enable one human creature to 
understand the pleasure in natural scenery felt by 
Theocritus or Yirgil ; and I believe the athletic health 
of our schoolboys might be made perfectly consistent 
with a spirit of more courtesy and reverence, both for 
men and things, than is recognisable in the behaviour 
of modern youth. Some year or two back, I was stay- 
ing at the Montanvert to paint Alpine roses, and went 
every day to watch the budding of a favorite bed, v/hich 
was rounding into faultless bloom beneath a cirque of 
rock, high enough, as I hoped, and close enough, to 
guard it from rude eyes and plucking hands. But, 

" Tra erto e piano era un sentiero ghembo, 
Che ne condusse in fianco del a lacca," 



PREFACE. XXXIX 



and on the day it reached the fulness of its rubied fire, 
I was standing near when it was discovered by a forager 
on the flanks of a travelling school of English and Ger- 
man lads. He shouted to his companions, and they 
swooped down upon it ; threw themselves into it, rolled 
over and over in it, shrieked, hallooed, and fought in it, 
trampled it down, and tore it up by the roots ; breath- 
less at last with rapture of ravage, they fixed the 
brightest of the remnant blossoms of it in their caps, 
and went on their way rejoicing. 

They left me much to think upon ; partly respecting 
the essential power of the beauty which could so excite 
them, and partly respecting the character of the youth 
which could only be excited to destroy. But the inci- 
dent was a perfect type of that irreverence for natural 
beauty with respect to which I said in the text, at the 
place already indicated, " You make railroads of the 
aisles of the cathedrals of the earth, and eat off their 
altars." For indeed all true lovers of natural beauty 
hold it in reverence so deep, that they would as soon 
think of climbing the pillars of the choir Beauvais for 
a gymnastic exercise, as of making a play-ground of 
Alpine snow : and they would not risk one hour of their 
joy among the hill meadows on a May morning, for the 



xl PBEFACE. 

fame or fortune of having stood on every pinnacle of 
the silver temple, and beheld the kingdoms of the world 
from it. Love of excitement is so far from being love 
of beauty, that it ends always in a joy in its exact re- 
verse ; joy in destruction, — as of my poor roses, — or in 
actual details of death ; until, in the literature of the 
day, "nothing is too dreadful, or too trivial, for the 
greed of the public." ^ And in politics, apathy, irrev- 
erence, and lust of luxury go hand in hand, until the best 
solemnization which can be conceived for the greatest 
event in modern European history, the crowning of 
Florence capital of Italy, is the accursed and ill-omened 
folly of casting down her old walls, and surrounding 
her with a "boulevard;" and this at the very time 
when every stone of her ancient cities is more precious 
to her than the gems of a Urim breastplate, and when 
every nerve of her heart and brain should have been 
strained to redeem her guilt and fulfil her freedom. It 
is not by making roads round Florence, but through 
Calabria, that she should begin her Roman causeway 
work again ; and her fate points her march, not on 
boulevards by Arno, but waist-deep in the lagoons at 
Venice. Not yet, indeed, but five years of patience and 
" Pall Mall Gazette, Au^st 15th, article on the Forward murders. 



PKEFACE. xli 

discipline of her youth would accomplish her power, 
and sweep the martello towers from the cliffs of Yer- 
ona, and the ramparts from the marsh of Mestre. But 
she will not teach her youth that discipline on boule- 
vards. 

Strange, that while we both, French and English, can 
give lessons in war, we only corrupt other nations when 
they imitate either our pleasures or our industries. 
We English, had we loved Switzerland indeed, should 
have striven to elevate, but not to disturb, the simpli- 
city of her people, by teaching them the sacre'dness of 
their fields and waters, the honour of their pastoral and 
burgher life, and the fellowship in glory of the grey 
turreted walls round their ancient cities, with their cot- 
tages in their fair groups by the forest and lake. Beau- 
tiful, indeed, upon the mountains, had been the feet of 
any v/ho had spoken peace to their children ; — who had 
taught those princely peasants to remember their line- 
age, and their league with the rocks of the field ; that 
so they might keep their mountain waters pure, and 
their mountain paths peaceful, and their traditions of 
domestic life holy. We have taught them (incapable 
by circumstances and position of ever becoming a great 
commercial nation) all the foulness of the modern lust 



xlii PKEFACE. 

of wealtli, without its practical intelligences ; and we 
have developed exactly the weakness of their tempera- 
ment by which they are liable to meanest ruin. Of the 
ancient architecture and most expressive beauty of 
their country there is now little vestige left ; and it is 
one of the few reasons which console me for the ad- 
vance of life, that I am old enough to remember the 
time when the sweet waves of the Reuss and Limmat 
(now foul with the refuse of manufacture) were as crys- 
talline as the heaven above them, when her pictured 
bridges and embattled towers ran unbroken round Lu- 
cerne ; when the Ehone flowed in deep-green, softly 
dividing currents round the wooded ramparts of Gen- 
eva ; and when from the marble roof of the western 
vault of Milan, I could watch the Rose of Italy flush in 
the first morning light, before a human foot had sullied 
its summit, or the reddening dawn on its rocks taken 
shadow of sadness from the crimson which long ago 
stained the ripples of Otterburn. 



SESAME AND LILIES 

THREE LECTURES. 



SESAME AND LILIES. 



LECTUKE L— SESAME. 

OF kings' treasukies. 

** You shall each have a cake of sesame, — and ten pound." 

— LuciAN : The Fisherman, 

I BELIEVE, ladies and gentlemen, that my first duty this 
evening is to ask your pardon for the ambiguity of title 
under which the subject of lecture has been announced ; 
and for having endeavoured, as you may ultimately think, 
to obtain your audiences under false pretences. For 
indeed I am not going to talk of kings, known as reg- 
nant, nor of treasuries, understood to contain wealth ; 
but of quite another order of royalty, and material of 
riches, than those usually acknowledged. And I had 
even intended to ask your attention for a little while on 
trust, and (as sometimes one contrives in taking a friend 
to see a favourite piece of scenery) to hide what I 
wanted most to show, with such imperfect cunning as 
I might, until we had unexpectedly reached the best 



6 SESAME AND LILIES. 

point of view by winding paths. But since my good 
plain-spoken friend, Canon Anson, has already partly 
anticipated my reserved " trot for the avenue " in his 
first advertised title of subject, ''How and What to 
Read ; " — and as also I have heard it said, by men prac- 
tised in public address, that hearers are never so much 
fatigued as by the endeavour to follow a speaker who 
gives them no clue to his purpose, I will take the slight 
mask off at once, and tell you plainly that I want to 
speak to you about books ; and about the way we read 
them, and could, or should read them. A grave sub- 
ject, you will say ; and a wide one ! Yes ; so wide that 
I shall make no effort to touch the compass of it. I 
will try only to bring before you a few simple thoughts 
about reading, which press themselves upon me every 
day more deeply, as I watch the course of the public 
mind with respect to our daily enlarging means of edu- 
cation, and the answeringly wider spreading, on the 
levels, of the irrigation of literature. It happens that 
I have practically some connexion with schools for dif- 
ferent classes of youth ; and I receive many letters from 
parents respecting the education of their children. In 
the mass of these letters, I am always struck by the 
precedence which the idea of a " position in life " takes 



OF KINGS TBEASUBIES. 7 

above all other thoughts in the parents' — more espec- 
ially in the mothers' — minds. " The education befitting 
such and such a station in life " — this is the phrase, this 
the object, always. They never seek, as far as I can 
make out, an education good in itself : the conception of 
abstract rightness in training rarely seems reached by 
the writers. But an education " which shall keep a 
good coat on my son's back ; — an education which shall 
enable him to ring with confidence the visitors' bell at 
double-belled doors ; — education which shall result ul- 
timately in establishment of a double-belled door to his 
own house ; in a word, which shall lead to " advancement 
in life." It never seems to occur to the parents that 
there ma^^ be an education which, in itself, is advance- 
ment in Life ; — that any other than that may perhaps 
be advancement in Death ; and that this essential edu- 
cation might be more easily got, or given, than they 
fancy, if they set about it in the right way ; while it is 
for no price, and by no favour, to be got, if they set 
about it in the v/rong. 

Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and effective 
in the mind of this busiest of countries, I suppose the 
first — at least that which is confessed with the greatest 
frankness, and put forward as the fittest stimulus to 



8 SESAME AND LILIES. 

youthful exertion — is this of " adyancement in life." 
My main purpose this evening is to determine, with 
you, what this idea practically includes, and what it 
should include. 

Practically, then, at present, '' advancement in life " 
means becoming conspicuous in life ; — obtaining a po- 
sition which shall be acknowledged by others to be 
respectable or honourable. "We do not understand by 
this advancement, in general, the mere making of 
money, but the being known to have made it ; not the 
accomplishment of any great aim, but the being seen to 
have accomplished it. In a word, we mean the grati- 
fication of our thirst for applause. That thirst, if the 
last infirmity of noble minds, is also the first infirmity 
of weak ones ; and, on the whole, the strongest impul- 
sive influence of average humanity : the greatest efforts 
of the race have always been traceable to the love of 
praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of 
pleasure. 

I am not about to attack or defend this impulse. I 
want you only to feel how it lies at the root of effort ; 
especially of all modern effort. It is the gratification of 
vanity which is, with us, the stimulus of toil, and balm 
of repose ; so closely does it touch the very springs of 



9 

life, that the wounding of our vanity is always spoken 
of (and truly) as in its measure mortal; we call it " mor- 
tification," using the same expression which we should 
apj)ly to a gangrenous and incurable bodily hurt. And 
although few of us may be physicians enough to recog- 
nize the various effect of this passion uj)on health and 
energy, I believe most honest men know and would at 
once acknowledge, its leading power with them as a 
motive. The seaman does not commonly desire to be 
made captain only because he knows he can manage 
the ship better than any other sailor on board. He 
wants to be made captain that he may be called captain. 
The clergyman does not usually want to be made a 
bishop only because he believes no other hand can, as 
firmly as his, direct the diocese through its difficulties. 
He wants to be made bishop primarily that he may be 
called " My Lord." And a prince does not usually de- 
sire to enlarge, or a subject to gain, a kingdom, because 
he believes that no one else can as well serve the state 
upon the throne ; but, briefly, because he wishes to be 
addressed as " Your Majesty," by as many lips as may 
be brought to such utterance. 

This, then, being the main idea of advancement in 
life, the force of it applies, for all of us, according to 



10 SESAME AND LILIES. 

our station, particularly to tliat secondary result of 
such advancement whicli we call " getting into good 
society." We want to get into good society, not that 
we may have it, but that we may be seen in it ; and 
our notion of its goodness depends primarily on its 
conspicuousne ss. 

"Will you pardon me if I pause for a moment to put 
what I fear you may think an impertinent question ? I 
never can go on with an address unless I feel, or know, 
that my audience are either with me or against me : (I 
do not much care which, in beginning ;) but I must 
know where they are ; and I would fain find out, at this 
instant, whether you think I am putting the motives of 
popular action too low. I am resolved to-night, to state 
them low enough to be admitted as probable ; for 
whenever, in my writings on Political Economy, I as- 
sume that a little honesty, or generosity, — or what used 
to be called " virtue " — may be calculated ujDon as a 
human motive of action, people always answer me, say- 
ing, " You must not calculate on that : that is not in 
human nature : you must not assume anything to be 
common to men but acquisitiveness and jealousy ; no 
other feeling ever has influence on them, except acci- 
dentally, and in matters out of the way of business." I 



OF lONGS' TKEASUBIES. ll 

begin accordingly to-night low down in the scale of 
motives ; but I must know if you think me right in do- 
ing so. Therefore, let me ask those who admit the love 
of praise to be usually the strongest motive in men's 
minds in seeking advancement, and the honest desire of 
doing any kind of duty to be an entirely secondary one, 
to hold up their hands. {About a dozen of haifids held up — 
tlie audience partly not being sure the lecturer is serious, and 
partly shy of expressing opinion.) I am quite serious — I 
really do want to know what you think ; however, I can 
judge by putting the reverse question. Will those who 
think that duty is generally the first, and love of praise 
the second motive, hold up their hands? (One hand 
reported to have been held tip, behind the lecturer.) Very 
good ; I see you are with me, and that you think I have 
not begun too near the ground. Novv^, without teasing 
you by putting farther question, I venture to assume 
that you will admit duty as at least a secondary or tertiary 
motive. You think that the desire of doing something 
useful, or obtaining some real good, is indeed an exist- 
ent collateral idea, though a secondary one, in most 
men's desire of advancement. You will grant that 
moderately honest men desire place and office, at least 
in some measure, for the sake of their beneficent power ; 



K - SESAME AND LILIES. 

and would wish to associate rather with sensible and 
well-informed persons than with fools and ignorant 
persons, whether they are seen in the company of the 
sensible ones or not. And finally, without being troubled 
by repetition of any common truisms about the precious- 
ness of friends, and the influence of companions, you 
will admit, doubtless, that according to the sincerity of 
our desire that our friends may be true, and our com- 
panions wise, — and in propDrtion to the earnestness 
and discretion with which we choose both, will be the 
general chances of our happiness and usefulness. 

But, granting that we had both the will and the sense 
to choose our friends well, how few of us have the 
power ! or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere 
of choice ! Nearly all our associations are determined 
by chance or necessity ; and restricted within a narrow 
circle. "We cannot know whom we would ; and those 
whom we know, we cannot have at our side when we 
most need them. All the higher circles of human intel- 
ligence are, to those beneath, only momentarily and 
partially open. We may, by good fortune, obtain a 
glimpse of a great poet, and hear the sound of his voice ; 
or put a question to a man of science, and be answered 
good-humouredly. "We may intrude ten minutes' talk 



OF kings' treasuries. 13 

on a cabinet minister, answered probably with words 
worse than silence, being deceptive ; or snatch, once or 
twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet 
in the path of a Princess, or arresting the kind glance 
of a Queen. And yet these momentary chances we 
covet ; and spend our years, and passions, and powers 
in pursuit of little more than these ; while, meantime, 
there is a society continually open to us, of people who 
will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or 
occupation ; — talk to us in the best words they can 
choose, and with thanks if we listen to them. And this 
society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, — and 
can be kept waiting round us all day long, not to grant 
audience, but to gain it ; — kings and statesmen lingering 
patiently in those plainly furnished and narrow ante- 
rooms, our bookcase shelves, — we make no account of 
that company, — perhaps never listen to a word they 
would say, all day long ! 

You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, 
that the apathy with which we regard this company of 
the noble, who are praying us to listen to them, and the 
passion with which we pursue the company, probably 
of the ignoble, who despise us, or who have nothing to 
teach us, are grounded in this, — that we can see the 



14 SESAME AND LILIES. 

faces of the living men, and it is themselves, and not 
their sayings, with which we desire to become familiar. 
But it is not so. Suppose you never were to see their 
faces ; — suppose you could be put behind a screen in 
the statesman's cabinet, or the prince's chamber, would 
you not be glad to listen to their words, though you 
were forbidden to advance beyond the screen ? And 
when the screen is only a little less, folded in two, in- 
stead of four, and you can be hidden behind the cover 
of the two boards that bind a book, and listen, all day 
long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied, deter- 
mined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men ; — this 
station of audience, and honourable privy council, you 
despise ! 

But perhaps you will say that it is because the living 
people talk of things that are passing, and are of im- 
mediate interest to you, that you desire to hear them. 
Nay ; that cannot be so, for the living people will them- 
selves tell you about passing matters, much better in 
their writings than in their careless talk. But I admit 
that this motive does influence you, so far as you prefer 
those rapid and ephemeral writings to slow and endur- 
ing writings — books, properly so called. For all books 
are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, 



OP kings' treasukies. 15 

and tlie books of all time. Mark this distinction — it is 
not one of quality only. It is not merely the bad book 
that does not last, and the good one that does. It is a 
distinction of species. There are good books for the 
hour, and good ones for all time ; bad books for the hour, 
and bad ones for all time. I must define the two kinds 
before I go farther. 

The good book of the hour, then, — I do not speak of 
the bad ones — is simply the useful or pleasant talk of 
some person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, 
printed for you. Yery useful often, telling you what 
you need to know ; very pleasant often, as a sensible 
friend's present talk would be. These bright accounts 
of travels ; good-humoured and witty discussions of 
question ; lively or pathetic story-telling in the form of 
novel ; firm fact-telling, by the real agents concerned in 
the events of passing history ; — all these books of the 
hour, multiplying among us as education becomes 
more general, are a peculiar characteristic and posses- 
sion of the present age ; we ought to be entirely thank- 
ful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we 
make no good use of them. But we make the worst 
possible use, if we allow them to usurp the place of true 
books : for, strictly speaking, they are not books at all. 



16 SESAME AND LILIES. 

but merely letters or newspapers in good print. Our 
friend's letter may be delightful, or necessary, to-day : 
wbetlier worth keeping or not, is to be considered. 
The newspaper may be entirely proper at breakfast 
time, but assuredly it is not reading for all day. So, 
though bound up in a volume, the long letter which 
gives you so pleasant an account of the inns, and roads, 
and weather last year at such a place, or which tells 
you that amusing story, or gives you the real circum- 
stances of such and such events, however valuable for 
occasional reference, may not be, in the real sense of 
the word, a "book " at all, nor, in the real sense, to be 
" read." A book is essentially not a talked thing, but 
a written thing ; and written, not with the view of mere 
communication, but of permanence. The book of talk 
is printed only because its author cannot speak to 
thousands of people at once ; if he could, he would — 
the volume is mere multiplication of his voice. You 
cannot talk to your friend in India ; if you could, you 
would; you write instead: that is mere conveya7ice of 
voice. But a book is written, not to multiply the voice 
merely, not to carry it merely, but to preserve it. The 
author has something to say which he perceives to be 
true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows, 



OF kings' treasuries. 17 

no one has yet said it ; so far as he knows, no one else 
can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melodiously 
if he may ; clearly, at all events. In the sum of his 
life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, 
manifest to him ; — this the piece of true knowledge, or 
sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has per- 
mitted him to seize. He would fain set it down for ever ; 
engrave it on rock, if he could ; saying, " This is the best 
of me ; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved, 
and hated, like another ; my life was as the vapour, and 
is not ; but this I saw and knew : this, if anything of 
mine, is worth your memory." That is his "writing;" 
it is, in his small human way, and with whatever degree 
of true inspiration is in him, his inscription, or scrip- 
ture. That is a " Book." 

Perhaps you think no books were ever so written ? 

But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, 
or at all in kindness ? or do you think there is never any 
honesty or benevolence in wise people? None of us, I 
hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever 
bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently 
done, that bit is his book, or his piece of art.* It is 

* Note this sentence carefully, and compare the Queen of the Air, 
§ 106. 



18 SESAlklE AND LILIES. 

mixed always with evil fragments — ill-done, redundant, 
affected work. But if you read rightly, you will easily 
discover the true bits, and those are the book. 

Now books of this kind have been written in all ages 
by their greatest men ; — by great leaders, great states- 
men, and great thinkers. These are all at your choice ; 
and life is short. You have heard as much before ; — 
yet have you measured and mapped out this short life 
and its possibilities ? Do you know, if you read this, 
that you cannot read that — that what you lose to-day 
you cannot gain to-morrow ? Will you go and gossip 
with your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you 
may talk with queens and kings ; or flatter yourselves 
that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own 
claims to respect that you jostle with the common crowd 
for entree here, and audience there, when all the while 
this eternal court is open to you, with its society wide 
as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and 
the mighty, of every place and time ? Into that you 
may enter always ; in that you may take fellowship and 
rank according to your wish ; from that, once entered 
into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault ; 
by your aristocracy of companionship there, your own 
inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the 



OF kings' teeasuries. 19 

motives with which you strive to take high place in the 
society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and 
sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to 
take in this company of the Dead. 

"The place you desire," and the place you fit yourself 
for, I must also say ; because, observe, this court of the 
past differs from all living aristocracy in this : — it is 
open to labour and to merit, but to nothing else. No 
wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, 
the guardian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, 
no vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the por- 
tieres of that silent Faubourg St. Germain, there is but 
brief question, " Do you deserve to enter ? " " Pass. 
Do you ask to be the companion of nobles ? Make 
yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for the 
conversation of the wise ? Learn to understand it, and 
you shall hear it. But on other terms ? — no. If you 
will not rige to us, we cannot stoop to you. The living 
lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher ex- 
plain his thought to you with considerable pain ; but 
here we neither feign nor interpret ; you must rise to 
the level of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by 
them, and share our feelings, if you would recognize 
our presence." 



20 SESAME AND LILIES. 

This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that 
it is much. You must, in a word, love these people, if 
you are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. 
They scorn your ambition. You must love them, and 
show your love in these two following ways. 

1. — First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and 
to enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, ob- 
serve ; not to find your own expressed by them. If the 
person who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you 
need not read it ; if he be, he will think differently from 
you in many respects. 

"Very ready we are to say of a book, " How good this 
is — that's exactly what I think ! " But the right feeling 
is, " How strange that is ! I never thought of that be- 
fore, and yet I see it is true ; or if I do not now, I hope 
I shall, some day." But whether thus submissively or 
not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at 
Ms meaning, not to find yours. Judge it afterwards, if 
you think yourself qualified to do so ; but ascertain it first. 
And be sure also, if the author is worth anything, that 
you will not get at his meaning all at once ; — nay, that 
at his whole meaning you will not for a long time arrive 
in any wise. Not that he does not say what he means, 
and in strong words too ; but he cannot say it all ; and 



OP kings' tbeasuries. 21 

wliat is more strange, will not, but in a hidden way and 
in parables, in order that he may be sure you want 
it. I cannot quite see the reason of this, nor analyse 
that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men which 
makes them always hide their deeper thought. They 
do not give it to you by way of help, but of reward, and 
will make themselves sure that you deserve it before 
they allow you to reach it. But it is the same with 
the physical type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to 
you and me, no reason why the electric forces of the 
earth should not carry whatever there is of gold within 
it at once to the mountain tops, so that kings and peo- 
ple might know that all the gold they could get was 
there ; and without any trouble of digging, or anxiety, 
or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, and coin as 
much as they needed. But Nature does not manage it 
so. She puts it in little fissures in the earth, nobody 
knows where : you may dig long and find none ; you 
must dig painfully to find any. 

And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. 
When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, 
"Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? 
Are my pickaxes*and shovels in good order, and am I 
in good trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow. 



22 SESAME AND LILIES. 

and my breath good, and my temper ? " And, keeping 
the figure a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for 
it is a thorouglily useful one, the metal you are in search 
of being the author's mind or meaning, his words are as 
the rock which you have to crush and smelt in order 
to get at it. And your pickaxes are your own care, 
wit, and learning ; your smelting-furnace is your own 
thoughtful soul. Do not hope to get at any good au- 
thor's meaning without those tools and that fire ; often 
you will need sharpest, finest chiselling, and patientest 
fusing, before you can gather one grain of the metal. 

And, therefore, first of all, I tell you, earnestly and 
authoritatively, (I hnoio I am right in this,) you must get 
into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assur- 
ing yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable — nay 
letter by letter. For though it is only by reason of the 
opposition of letters in the function of signs, to sounds 
in function of signs, that the study of books is called 
" literature," and that a man versed in it is called, by 
the consent of nations, a man of letters instead of a man 
of books, or of words, you may yet connect with that 
accidental nomenclature this real principle ; — that you 
might read all the books in the British Museum (if you 
could live long enough), and remain an utterly " illiter- 



OF kings' teeasueies. 23 

ate," uneducated person ; but that if you read ten pages 
of a good book, letter by letter, — that is to say, with 
real accuracy, — you are for evermore in some measure 
an educated person. The entire difference between 
education and non-education (as regards the merely in- 
tellectual part of it), consists in this accuracy. A well- 
educated gentleman may not know many languages, — 
may not be able to speak any but his own, — may have 
read very few books. But whatever language he knows, 
he knows precisely ; whatever word he pronounces he 
pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned in the 
peerage of words ; knows the words of true descent and 
ancient blood, at a glance, from words oi modern 
canaille ; remembers all their ancestry — their intermar- 
riages, distantest relationships, and the extent to which 
they were admitted, and offices the}^ held, among the na- 
tional noblesse of words at any time, and in any country, 
But an uneducated person may know by memory any 
number of languages, and talk them all, and yet truly 
know not a word of any, — not a word even of his own. An 
ordinarily clever and sensible seaman will be able to 
make his v/ay ashore at most ports ; yet he has only to 
speak a sentence of any language to be known for an illit- 
erate person : so also the accent, or turn of expression of 



24 SESAME AND LILIES. 

a single sentence will at oncB mark a scholar. And this 
is so strongly felt, so conclusively admitted by educated 
persons, that a false accent or a mistaken syllable is 
enough, in the parliament of any civilized nation, to 
assign to a man a certain degree of inferior standing for 
ever. And this is right ; but it is a pity that the ac- 
curacy insisted on is not greater, and required to a 
serious purpose. It is right that a false Latin quantity 
should excite a smile in the House of Commons ; but it 
is wrong that a false English meaning should not excite 
a frown there. Let the accent of words be watched, by 
all means, but let their meaning be watched more closely 
still, and fewer will do the work. A few words well 
chosen and well distinguished, will do work that a 
thousand cannot, when every one is acting, equivocally, 
in the function of another. Yes ; and words, if they are 
not watched, will do deadly work sometimes. There 
are masked words droning and skulking about us in 
Europe just now, — (there never were so many, owing to 
the spread of a shallow, blotching, blundering, infec- 
tious " information," or rather deformation, everywhere, 
and to the teaching of catechisms and phrases at schools 
instead of human meanings) — there are masked words 
abroad, I say, which nobody understands, but which 



OF KINGS' TREASUEIES. * 25 

everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live 
for, or even die for, fancying they mean this, or that, or 
the other, of things dear to them : for such words wear 
chamseleon cloaks — " groundlion " cloaks, of the colour 
of the ground of any man's fancy : on that ground they 
lie in wait, and rend him with a spring from it. There 
were never creatures of prey so mischievous, never dip- 
lomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as 
these masked words ; they are the unjust stewards of 
all men's ideas : whatever fancy or favourite instinct a 
man most cherishes, he gives to his favourite masked 
word to take care of for him ; the word at last comes 
to have an infinite power over him, — you cannot get at 
him but by its ministry. And in languages so mongrel 
in breed as the English, there is a fatal power of equiv- 
ocation put into men's hands, almost whether they will 
or no, in being able to use Greek or Latin forms for a 
word when they want it to be respectable, and Saxon or 
otherwise common forms when they want to discredit 
it. "What a singular and salutary effect, for instance, 
would be produced on the minds of people who are in 
the habit of taking the Form of the words they live by, 
for the Power of which those words tell them, if we 
always either retained, or refused, the Greek form 



26 SESAME AND LILIES. 

" biblos," or " biblion," as the right expression for " book " 
— instead of employing it only in the one instance 
in which we wish to give dignity to the idea, and trans- 
lating it everywhere else. How wholesome it would be 
for the many simple persons who worship the Letter of 
God's Word instead of its Spirit, (just as other idolaters 
worship His picture instead of His presence, (if, in such 
places (for instance) as Acts xix. 19 we retained the 
Greek expression, instead of translating it, and they had 
to read — " Many of them also which used curious arts, 
brought their Bibles together, and burnt them before 
all men ; and they counted the price of them, and found 
it fifty thousand pieces of silver ! " Or if, on the other 
hand, we translated instead of retaining it, and always 
spoke of "The Holy Book," instead of "Holy Bible," 
it might come into more heads than it does at present 
that the Word of God, by which the heavens were, of 
old, and by which they, are now kept in store,* cannot 
be made a present of to anybody in morocco binding ; 
nor sown on any wayside by help either of steam plough 
or steam press ; but is nevertheless being offered to as 
daily, and by us with contumely refused ; and sowrr m 
us daily, and by us as instantly as may be, choked. 
* 2 Peter iii. 5-7. 



OF kings' treasuries. 27 

So, again, consider what effect has been produced on 
the English vulgar mind by the use of the sonorous 
Latin form " damno," in translating the Greek nara- 
HfJiVGDy when people charitably wish to make it forcible ; 
and the substitution of the temperate "condemn" for 
it, when they choose to keep it gentle. And what 
notable sermons have been preached by illiterate clergy- 
men on— " He that believeth not shall be damned;" 
though they would shrink with horror from translating 
Heb. xi. 7, " The saving of his house, by which he 
damned the world;" or John viii. 12, "Woman, hath no 
man damned thee ? She saith. No man. Lord. Jesus 
answered her, Neither do I damn thee ; go and sin no 
more." And divisions in the mind of Europe, which 
have cost seas of blood, and in the defence of which the 
noblest soiils of men have been cast away in frantic des- 
olation, countless as forest leaves — though, in the heart 
of them, founded on deeper causes — have nevertheless 
been rendered practicably possible, namely, by the 
European adoption of the Greek word for a public meet- 
ing, to give peculiar respectability to such meetings, 
when held for religious purposes ; and other collateral 
equivocations, such as the vulgar English one of using 
the word " priest " as a contraction for " presbyter." 



28 SESAIVIE AND LILIES. 

Kow, in order to deal with words rightly, this is the 
habit you must form. Nearly every word in your lan- 
guage has been first a word of some other language — of 
Saxon, German, French, Latin, or Greek (not to speak 
of eastern and primitive dialects). And many words 
have been all these ; — that is to say, have been Greek 
first, Latin next, French or German next, and English 
last : undergoing a certain change of sense and use on 
the lips of each nation ; but retaining a deep vital 
meaning which all good scholars feel in employing them, 
even at this day. If you do not know the Greek alpha- 
bet, learn it ; young or old — girl or boy — whoever you 
may be, if you think of reading seriously (which, of 
course, implies that you have some leisure at command), 
learn your Greek alphabet ; then get good dictionaries 
of all these languages, and whenever you are in doubt 
about a word, hunt it down patiently. Eead Max 
MuUer's lectures thoroughly, to begin with ; and, after 
that, never let a word escape you that looks suspicious. 
It is severe work ; but you will find it, even at first, in- 
teresting, and at last, endlessly amusing. And the gen- 
eral gain to your character, in power and precision, will 
be quite incalculable. 

Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to know. 



OF kings' treasubies. 29 

Greek, or Latin, or French. It takes a whole life to 
learn any language perfectly. But you can easily as- 
certain the meanings through which the English word 
has passed ; and those which in a good writer's work it 
must still bear. 

And now, merely for example's sake, I will, with your 
permission, read a few lines of a true book with you, 
carefully ; and see what will come out of them. I will 
take a book perfectly known to you all ; No English 
words are more familiar to us, yet nothing perhaps has 
been less read with sincerity. I will take these few 
following lines of Lycidas : 

'^ Last came, and last did go, 
The pilot of the Galilean lake ; 
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain), 
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake, 
How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain. 
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 
Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold ! 
Of other care they little reckoning make. 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. 
And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; 
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else, the least 
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs ! 



30 SESAME AND LILIES. 

What recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped ; 

And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw ; 

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 

But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 

Eot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 

Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 

Daily devours apace, and nothing said." 

Let us think over this passage, and examine its words. 

First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to St. 
Peter, not only his full episcopal function, but the very 
types of it which Protestants usually refuse most pas- 
sionately ? His " mitred " locks ! Milton was no Bishop- 
lover ; how comes St. Peter to be " mitred ? " " Two 
massy keys he bore." Is this, then, the power of the keys 
claimed by the Bishops of Eome, and is it acknowledged 
here by Milton only in a poetical licence, for the sake 
of its picturesqueness, that he may get the gleam of the 
golden keys to help his effect ? Do not think it. Great 
men do not play stage tricks with doctrines of life and 
death : only little men do that. Milton means what he 
says ; and means it with his might too — is going to put 
the whole strength of his spirit presently into the say- 
ing of it. For though not a lover of false bishops, he 
was a lover of true ones ; and the Lake-pilot is here, in 



OF kings' treasuries. 31 

his tliouglits, the type and head of true episcopal 
power. Eor Milton reads that text, " I will give unto 
thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven" quite honestly. 
Puritan though he be, he would not blot it out of the 
book because there have been bad bishops ; nay, in 
order to understand him, we must understand that verse 
first ; it will not do to eye it askance, or whisper it under 
our breath, as if it were a weapon of an adverse sect. 
It is a solemn, universal assertion, deeply to be kept in 
mind by all sects. But perhaps we shall be better able 
to reason on it if we go on a little farther, and come 
back to it. For clearly, this marked insistance on the 
power of the true episcopate is to make us feel more 
weightily what is to be charged against the false claim- 
ants of episcopate ; or generally, against false claimants 
of power and rank in the body of the clergy ; they 
who, " for their^ bellies' sake, creep, and intrude, and 
climb into the fold." 

Do not think Milton uses those three words to fill up 
his verse, as a loose writer would. He needs all the 
three ; specially those three, and no more than those — 
" creep," and intrude,',' and " climb ; " no other words 
would or could serve the turn, and no more could be 
added. For they exhaustively comprehend the three 



32 SESAME AND LILIES. 

classes, correspondent to the tliree characters, of men 
who dishonestly seek ecclesiastical power. First, those 
who " creep " into the fold ; who do not care for office, 
nor name, but for secret influence, and do all things 
occultly and cunningly, consenting to any servility of 
office or conduct, so only that they may intimately dis- 
cern, and unawares direct, the minds of men. Then 
those who " intrude " (thrust, that is) themselves into 
the fold, who by natural insolence of heart, and stout 
eloquence of tongue, and fearlessly perseverant self- 
assertion, obtain hearing and authority with the "com- 
mon crowd. Lastly, those who " climb," who by labour 
and learning, both stout and sound, but selfishly exerted 
in the cause of their own ambition, gain high dignities 
and authorities, and become " lords over the heritage," 
though not " ensamples to the flock." 
Now go on : — 

" Of other care they little reckoning make, 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. 
Blind mouths — " 

I pause again, for this is a strange expression; 
a broken metaphor, one might think, careless and 
unscholarly. 

Not so : its very audacity and pithiness are intended 



or kings' treasueies. 33 

to make ns look close at the phrase and remember it. 
Those two monosyllables express the precisely accurate 
contraries of right character, in the two great offices of 
the Church— those of bishop and pastor. 
A Bishop means a person who sees. 
A Pastor means one who feeds. 

The most unbishoply character a man can have is 
therefore to be Blind. 

The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to 
be fed,— to be a Mouth. 

Take the two reverses together, and you have " blind 
mouths." "We may advisably follow out this idea a 
little. Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen 
from bishops desiring power more than light They 
want authority, not outlook. Wheieas their real office 
is not to rule; though it may be vigorously to exhort 
and rebuke ; it is the king's office to rule ; the bishop's 
office is to oversee the flock ; to number it, sheep by sheep ; 
to be ready always to give full account of it. Now it is 
clear he cannot give account of the souls, if he has not 
so much as numbered the bodies of his flock. The first 
thing, therefore, that a bishop has to do is at least to 
put himself in a position in which, at any moment, he 
can obtain the history from childhood of every living 

2* 



34: SESAME AND LILIES. 

soul in liis diocese, and of its present state. Down in 
tliat back street, Bill, and Nancy, knocking eacli other's 
teeth out ! — Does the bishop know all about it ? Has 
he his eye upon them ? Has he had his eye upon them ? 
Can he circumstantially explain to us how Bill got into 
the habit of beating Nancy about the head? If he can- 
not, he is no bishop, though he had a mitre as high as 
Salisbury steeple ; he is no bishop, — he has sought to 
be at the helm instead of the masthead ; he has no sight 
of things. " Nay," you say, it is not his duty to look 
after Bill in the back street. What ! the fat sheep that 
have full fleeces — you think it is only those he should 
look after, while (go back to your Milton) " the hungry 
sheep look up, and are not fed, besides what the grim 
wolf, with privy paw" (bishops knowing nothing about 
it) "daily devours apace, and nothing said?" 

" But that's not our idea of a bishop.""^ Perhaps not"; 
but it vv^as St. Paul's ; and it was Milton's. They may 
be right, or we may be ; but we must not think we are 
reading either one or the other by putting our meaning 
into their words. 

I go on. 

"But, swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 
* Compare the 13th Letter in Time and Tide. 



or kings' treasubies. 35 

This is to meet the vulgar answer that " ii the j)oor 
are not looked after in their bodies, they are in their 
souls; they have spiritual food." 

And Milton says, "They have no such thing as 
spiritual food; they are only swollen with wind." At 
first you may think that is a coarse type, and an obscure 
one. But again, it is a quite literally accurate one. 
Take up your Latin and Greek dictionaries, and find 
find out the meaning of " Spirit." It is only a contrac- 
tion of the Latin word "breath," and an indistinct 
translation of the Greek word for '• wind." Th^ same 
word is used in writing, " The wind bloweth where it 
listeth ;" and in writing, " So is every one that is born 
of the Spirit ;" born of the hreatli, that is ; for it means 
the breath of God, in soul and body. "We have the true 
sense of it in our words " inspiration " and " expire." 
Now, there are two kinds of breath with which the flock 
may be filled ; God's breath, and man's. The breath of 
God is health, and life, and peace to them, as the air of 
heaven is to the flocks on the hills ; but man's breath — 
the word which he calls spiritual, — is disease and con- 
tagion to them, as the fog of the fen. They rot inwardly 
with it ; they are puffed up by it, as a dead body by the 
vapours of its own decomposition. This is literally true 



36 SESAME AND LILIES. 

of all false religious teaching; the first and last, and 
fatalest sign of it is that " puffing up." Your converted 
children, who teach their parents ; your converted con- 
victs, who teach honest men; your converted dunces, 
who, having lived in cretinous stupefaction half their 
lives, suddenly awakening to the fact of there being a 
God, fancy themselves therefore His peculiar people 
and raessengers ; your sectarians of every species, small 
and great, Catholic or Protestant, of high church or low, 
in so far as they think themselves exclusively in the 
right ^d others wrong; and pre-eminently, in every 
sect, those who hold that men can be saved by thinking 
rightly" instead of doing rightly, by word instead of act, 
and wish instead of work: — these are the true fog 
children — clouds, these, without water ; bodies, these, 
of putrescent vapour and skin, without blood or flesh : 
blown bag-pipes for the fiends to pipe with — corrupt, 
and corrupting, — "Swollen with wind, and the rank 
mist they draw." 

Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting the power 
of the keys, for now we can understand them. Note the 
difference between Milton and Dante in their interpre- 
tation of this power: for once, the latter is weaker in 
thought ; he supposes both the keys to be of the gate of 



OF kings' teeasubies. 37 

heaven ; one is of gold, tlie other of silver : they are given 
by St. Peter to the sentinel angel ; and it is not easy to 
determine the meaning either of the substances of the 
three steps of the gate, or of the two keys. But Milton 
makes one, of gold, the key of heaven ; the other, of 
iron, the key of the prison, in which the wicked teach- 
ers are to be bound who " have taken away the key of 
knowledge, yet entered not in themselves." 

We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor 
are to see, and feed ; and, of all who do so, it is said, 
"He that watereth, shall be watered also himself." But 
the reverse is truth also. He that watereth not, shall 
be withered himself, and he that seeth not, shall himself 
be shut out of sight, — shut into the perpetual prison- 
house. And that prison opens here, as well as here- 
after: he who is to be bound in heaven must first be 
bound on earth. That command to the strong angels, 
of which the rock-apostle is the image, " Take him, and 
bind him hand and foot, and cast him out," issues, in its 
measure, against the teacher, for every help withheld, 
and for every truth refused, and for every falsehood 
enforced ; so that he is more strictly fettered the more 
he fetters, and farther outcast, as he more and more 
misleads, till at last the bars of the iron cage close 



38 SESAME AND LILIES. ^ 

upon liim, and as " the golden opes, the iron shuts 
amain." 

We have got something out of the lines, I think, and 
much more is yet to be found in them ; but we have done 
enough by way of example of the kind of word-by-word 
examination of your author which is rightly called 
"reading;" watching every accent and expression, and 
putting ourselves always in the author's place, annihil- 
ating our own personality, and seeking to enter into 
his, so as to be able assuredly to say, "Thus Milton 
thought," not " Thus I thought, in mis-reading Milton." 
And by this process you will gradually come to attach 
less weight to your own " Thus I thought " at other 
times. You will begin to perceive that what you 
thought was a matter of no serious importance ; — that 
your thoughts on any subject are not perhaps the clear- 
est and wisest that could be arrived at thereupon : — in 
fact, that unless you are a very singular person, you 
cannot be said to have any " thoughts " at all ; that you 
have no materials for them, in any serious matters ; " — 
no right to " think," but only to try to learn more of the 

* Modern "Education" for the most part signifies giving people 
the faculty of thinking wrong on every conceivable subject of import- 
ance to them. 



OF KINGS TBEASUBIES. 6\) 

facts. Nay, most probably all your life (unless, as I 
said, you are a singular person) you will have no legiti- 
mate riglit to an "opinion " on any business, except that 
instantly under your hand. What must of necessity be 
done, you can always find out, beyond question, how to 
do. Have you a house to keep in order, a commodity 
to sell, a field to plough, a ditch to cleanse ? There 
need be no two opinions about these proceedings ; it 
is at your peril if you have not much more than an 
"opinion" on the way to manage such matters. And 
also, outside of your own business, there are one or two 
subjects on which you are bound to have but one opin- 
ion. That roguery and lying are objectionable, and are 
instantly to be flogged out of the way whenever discov- 
ered; — that covetousness and love of quarrelling are 
dangerous dispositions even in children, and deadly 
dispositions in men and nations ; — that in the end, the 
God of heaven and earth loves active, modest, and kind 
people, and hates idle, proud, greedy, and cruel ones ; — 
on these general facts you are bound to have but one 
and that a very strong, opinion. For the rest, respect- 
ing religions, governments, sciences, arts, you will find 
that, on the whole, you can know nothing, — ^judge noth- 
ing ; that the best you can do, even though you may be 



40 SESAME AND LILIES. 

a Y/ell-educated person, is to be silent, and strive to be 
•wiser every day, and to understand a little more of tbe 
thoughts of others, which so soon as you try to do hon- 
estly, you will discoA^er that the thoughts even of the 
wisest are very little more than pertinent questions. 
To put the difficulty into a clear shape, and exhibit 
to you the grounds for ^decision, that is all they can 
generally do for you ! — and well for them and for us, 
if indeed they are able "to mix the music with our 
thoughts, and sadden us with heavenly doubts." This 
writer, from whom I have been reading to you, is 
not among the first or wisest : he sees shrewdly as far 
as he sees, and therefore it is easy to find out his full 
meaning ; but with the greater men, you cannot fathom 
their meaning ; they do not even wholly measure it 
themselves, — it is so wide. Suppose I had asked you, 
for instance, to seek for Shakespeare's opinion, instead 
of Milton's, on this matter of Church authority ? — or for 
Dante's? Have any of you, at this instant, the least 
idea what either thought about it ? Have you ever • 
balanced the scene with the bishops in Eichard III. 
against the character of Cranmer ? the description of Sfc. 
Francis and St. Dominic against that of him who made 
Virgil wonder to gaze upon him, — " disteso, tanto vil- 



OF kings' treasubies. 41 

mente, nell' eterno esilio;" or of him whom Dante 
stood beside, " come '1 frate che confessa lo perfido 
assassin ? " " Shakespeare and Alighieri knew men bet- 
ter than most of us, I presume ! They were both in the 
midst of the main struggle between the temporal and 
spiritual powers. They had an opinion, we may guess ? 
But Yv^here is it ? Bring it into court ! Put Shake- 
speare's or Dante's creed into articles, and send that up 
into the Ecclesiastical Courts ! 

You will not be able, I tell you again, for many and 
many a day, to come at the real purposes and teaching 
of these great men ; but a very little honest study of 
them will enable you to perceive that what you took 
for your own " judgment " was mere chance prejudice, 
and drifted, helpless, entangled weed of castaway 
thought : nay, you will see that most men's minds are 
indeed little better than rough heath wilderness, neg- 
lected and stubborn, partly barren, partly overgrown 
with pestilent brakes and venomous wind-sown herbage 
of evil surmise ; that the first thing you have to do for 
them, and yourself, is eagerly and scornfully to set fire 
to tills; burn all the jungle into wholesome ash heaps, 
and then plough and sow. All the true literary work 
* Inf. xix, 71 ; xxiii. 117. 



42 SESAME AND LILIES. 

before you, for life, must begin with obedience to tliat 
order, " Break ujd your fallow ground, and sow not 
among tJiorns.'' 

II. Having tben faithfully listened to the great 
teachers, that you may enter into their Thoughts, you 
have yet this higher advance to make ; — you have to 
enter into their Hearts. As you go to them first for 
clear sight, so you must stay with them that you may 
share at last their just and mighty Passion. Passion, 
or " sensation." I am not afraid of the word ; still less 
of the thing. Tou have heard many outcries against 
sensation lately ; but, I can tell you, it is not less sen- 
sation we want, but more. The ennobling difference 
between one man and another, — between one animal 
and another, — is precisely in this, that one feels more 
than another. If we were sponges, perhaps sensation 
might not be easily got for us ; if we were earth-worms, 
liable at every instant to be cut in two by the spade, 
perhaps too much sensation might not be good for us. 
But, being human creatures, it is good for us ; nay, we 
are only human in so far as we are sensitive, and our 
honour is precisely in proportion to our passion. 

You know I said of that great and pure society of the 
dead, that it vv^ould allow " no vain or vulgar person to 



OF kings' teeasubies. 43 

enter there." What do you think I meant by a " vulgar " 
person? What do you yourselves mean by "vulgarity?" 
You will find it a fruitful subject of thought ; but, 
briefly, the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sen- 
sation. Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an un- 
trained and undeveloped bluntness of body and mind ; 
but in true inbred vulgarity, there is a deathful callous- 
ness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every 
sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without 
pleasure, without horror, and without pity. It is in 
the blunt hand and the dead heart, in the diseased 
habit, in the hardened conscience, that men become 
vulgar ; they are for ever vulgar, precisely in proportion 
as they are incapable of sympathy, — of quick under- 
standing, — of all that, in deep insistance on the com- 
mon, but most accurate term, may be called the " tact " 
or touch-faculty of body and soul ; that tact which the 
Mimosa has in trees, which the pure woman has above 
all creatures ; — fineness and fulness of sensation, beyond 
reason; — the guide and sanctifier of reason itself. 
Eeason can but determine what is true : — it is the God- 
given passion of humanity which alone can recognize 
what God has made good. 
^ We come then to the great concourse of the Dead, 



4A SESAME AND LILIES. 

not merely to know from them what is True, but chiefly 
to feel with them what is Kighteous. Now, to feel with 
them, we must be like them ; and none of us can be- 
come that without pains. As the true knowledge is 
disciplined and tested knowledge, — not the first thought 
that comes, — so the true passion is disciplined and 
tested passion — not the first passion that comes. The 
first that come are the vain, the false, the treacherous ; 
if you yield to them they will lead you wildly and far 
in vain pursuit, in hollow enthusiasm, till you have no 
true purpose and no true passion left. Not that any 
feeling possible to humanity is in itself wrong, but only 
wrong when undisciplined. Its nobility is in its force 
and justice ; it is wrong when it is weak, and felt for 
paltry cause. There is a mean wonder as of a child 
who sees a juggler tossing golden balls, and this is base, 
if you will. But do you think that the wonder is igno- 
ble, or the sensation less, with which every human soul 
is called to watch the golden balls of heaven tossed 
through the night by the Hand that made them ? There 
is a mean curiosity, as of a child opening a forbidden 
door, or a servant j)rying into her master's business ; — 
and a noble curiosity, questioning, in the. front of dan- 
ger, the source of the great river beyond the sand — the 



OF kings' treasuries. 45 

place of tlie great continents beyond the sea ; — a no- 
bler curiosity still, which questions of the source of 
the Eiver of Life, and of the space of the Continent of 
Heaven, — things which "the angels desire to look into." 
So the anxiety is ignoble, with which you linger over 
the course and catastrophe of an idle tale ; but do you 
think the anxiety is less, or greater, with which you 
watch, or ought to watch, the dealings of fate and des- 
tiny with the life of an agonized nation? Alas ! it is the 
narrowness, selfishness, minuteness, of your sensation 
that you have to deplore in England at this day ; — sen- 
sation which spends itself in bouquets and speeches ; 
in re veilings and junketings ; in sham fights and gay 
puppet shows, while you can look on and see noble na- 
tions murdered, man by man, woman by woman, child 
by child, without an effort, or a tear. 

I said " minuteness " and " selfishness " of sensation, 
but in a word, I ought to have said " injustice " or 
" unrighteousness " of sensation. For as in nothing is 
a gentleman better to be discerned from a vulgar per- 
son, so in nothing is a gentle nation (such nations have 
been) better to be discerned from a mob, than in this, 
— that their feelings are constant and just, results of 
due contemplation, and of equal thought. You can talk 



4:6 SESAME AND LILIES. 

a mob into anything ; its feelings may be — usually are 
— on the whole generous and right ; but it has no foun- 
dation for them, no hold of them ; you may tease or 
tickle it into any, at your pleasure ; it thinks by infec- 
tion, for the most part, catching a passion like a cold, 
and there is nothing so little that it will not roar itself 
wild about, when the fit is on; — nothing so great but 
it will forget in an hour, when the fit is past. But 
a gentleman's or a gentle nation's, passions are just, 
measured and continuous. A great nation, for instance, 
does not spend its entire national wits for a couple of 
months in weighing evidence of a single ruffian's haying 
done a single murder ; and for a couple of years, see 
its own children murder each other by their thousands 
or tens of thousands a day, considering only what the 
effect is likely to be on the price of cotton, and caring 
nowise to determine which side of battle is in the wrong. 
Neither does a great nation send its poor little boys to 
jail for stealing six walnuts, and allow its bankrupts to 
steal their hundreds or thousands with a bow, and its 
bankers, rich with poor men's savings, to close their 
doors " under circumstances over which they have no 
control," with a " by your leave ; " and large landed es- 
tates to be bought by men who have made their money 



OF KINGS* TEEASURIES. 47 

bj going with armed steamers up and down the China 
Seas, selling opium at the cannon's mouth, and altering, 
for the benefit of the foreign nation, the common high- 
wayman's demd-nd of "your money or your life," into 
that of "your money and your life. ' Neither does a 
great nation allow the lives of its innocent poor to be 
parched out of them by fog fever, and rotted out of them 
by dunghill plague, for the sake of sixpence a life ex- 
tra per week to its landlords f and then debate, with 

* See the evidence in the Medical officer's report to the Privy Council, 
just published. There are suggestions in its preface which will make 
some stir among us, I fancy, respecting which let me note these points 
following : — 

There are two theories on the subject of land now abroad, and in 
contention ; both false. 

The first is that by Heavenly law, there have always existed, and 
must continue to exist, a certain number of hereditarily sacred persons, 
to whom the earth, air, and water of the world belong, as personal 
property ; of which earth, air and water these persons may, at their 
pleasure, permit, or forbid, the rest of the human race to eat, breathe, 
or to drink. This theory is not for many years longer tenable. The 
adverse theory is that a division of the land of the world among the mob 
of the world would immediately elevate the said mob into sacred per- 
sonages ; that houses would then build themselves, and corn grow of 
itself ; and that everybody would be able to live, without doing any 
work for his living. This theory would also be found highly untenable 
in practice. 

It will, however, require some rough experiments, and rougher catas- 
trophes, even in this magnesium-lighted epoch, before the generality 



48 SESAME AND LILIES. 

drivelling tears, and diabolical sympathies, whether it 
ought not piously to save, and nursingly cherish, the 

of persons "will be convinced that no law concerning anything, least of 
all concerning land, for either holding or dividing it, or renting it high, 
or renting it low, would be of the smallest ultimate use to the people, 
so long as the general contest for life, and for the means of life, remains 
one of mere brutal competition. That contest, in an unprincipled na- 
tion, will take one deadly form or another, whatever laws you make 
for it. For instance, it would be an entirely wholesome law for Eng- 
land, if it could be carried, that maximum limits should be assigned to 
incomes, according to classes ; and that every nobleman's income should 
be paid to him as a fixed salary or pension by the nation ; and not squeezed 
by him in a variable sum, at discretion, out of the tenants of his land. 
But if you could get such a law passed to-morrow ; and if, which would 
be farther necessary, you could fix the value of the assigned incomes by 
making a given weight of pure wheat-flour legal tender for a given sum, 
a twelve-month would not pass before another currency would have 
been tacitly established, and the power of accumulative wealth would 
have re-asserted itself in some other article, or some imaginary sign. 
Forbid men to buy each other's lives for sovereigns, and they will for 
shells, or slates. There is only oiie cure for public distress — and that 
is public education, directed to make men thoughtful, merciful, and 
just. There are, indeed, many laws conceivable which would gradually 
better and strengthen the national temper ; but, for the most part, they 
are such as the national temper must be much bettered before it would 
bear. A nation in its youth may be helped by laws, as a weak child 
by backboards, but when it is old, it cannot that way straighten its 
crooked spine. 

And besides, the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one ; distribute 
the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, — Who 
is to dig it? Which of us, in brief words, is to do the hard and dirty 



OF kings' TEEASUKIES. 4:9 

lives of its murderers. Also, a great nation having 
made up its mind that hanging is quite the wholesomest 
process for its homicides in general, can yet with mercy 

work for the rest— and for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and 
clean work, and for what pay? Who is to do no work, and for what 
pay? And there are curious moral and religious questions connected 
with these. How far is it lawful to suck a portion of the soul out of a 
great many persons, in order to put the abstracted psychical quantities 
together, and make one very beautiful or ideal soul? If we had to 
deal with mere blood, instead of spirit, and the thing might literally 
be done (as it has been done with infants before now) so that it were 
possible, by taking a certain quantity of blood from the arms of a given 
number of the mob, and putting it all into one person, to make a more 
azure-blooded gentleman of him, the thing would of course be man- 
aged; but secretly, I should conceive. But now, because it is brain 
and soul that we abstract, not visible blood, it can be done quite openly ; 
and we live, we gentlemen, on delicatest prey, after the manner of 
weasels ; that is to say, we keep a certain number of clowns digging and 
ditching, and generally stupefied, in order that we, being fed gratis, 
may have all the thinking and feeling to ourselves. Yet there is a great 
deal to be said for this. A highly-bred and trained English, French, 
Austrian, or Italian gentleman (much more a lady) is a great produc- 
tion ; a better production than most statues ; being beautifully coloured 
as well as shaped, and plus all the brains; a glorious thing to look at, a 
wonderful thing to talk to ; and you cannot have it, any more than a 
pyramid or a church, but by sacrifice of much contributed life. And 
it is, perhaps, better to build a beautiful human creature than a beauti- 
ful dome or steeple, and more delightful to look up reverently to a 
creature far above us, than to a wall ; only the beautiful human crea- 
ture will have some duties to do in return — duties of living belfry and 
rampart — of which presently. 



50 SESAME AND LILIES. 

distinguish between the degrees of guilt in homicides ; 
and does not yelp like a pack of frost-pinched wolf-cubs 
on the blood-track of an unhappy crazed boy, or grey- 
haired clodpate Othello, '^ perplexed i' the extreme," at 
the yery moment that it is sending a Minister of the 
Crown to make polite speeches to a man who is bayonet- 
ing young girls in their father's sight, and killing noble 
youths in cool blood, faster than a country butcher kills 
lambs in spring. And, lastly, a great nation does not 
mock Heaven and its Powers, by pretending belief in a 
revelation which asserts the love of money to be the 
root of all evil, and declaring, at the same time, that it 
is actuated, and intends to be actuated, in all chief na- 
tional deeds and measures, by no other love. 

My friends, I do not know why any of us should talk 
about reading. "We want some sharper discipline than 
that of reading ; but, at all events, be assured, we can- 
not read. No reading is possible for a people with its 
mind in this state. No sentence of any great writer is 
intelligible to them. It is simply and sternly impos- 
sible for the English public, at this moment, to under- 
stand any thoughtful writing, — so incapable of thought 
has it become in its insanity of avarice. Happily, our 
disease is, as yet, little worse than this incapacity of 



OF kings' tkeasubies. 51 

tliought ; it is not corruption of the inner nature ; we 
ring true still, when anything strikes home to us ; and 
though the idea that everything should " pay " has in- 
fected our every purpose so deeply, that even when we 
would play the good Samaritan, we never take out our 
twopence and give them to the host, without saying, 
" When I come again, thou shalt give me fourpence," 
there is a capacity of noble passion left in our hearts' 
core. We show it in our work — in our war, — even in those 
unjust domestic affections which make us furious at a 
small* private wrong, while we are polite to a boundless 
public one : we are still industrious to the last hour of the 
day, though we add the gambler's fury to the labourer's 
patience ; we are still brave to the death, though inca- 
pable of discerning true cause for battle, and are still 
true in affection to our own flesh, to the death, as the 
sea-monsters are, and the rock-eagles. And there is 
hope for a nation while this can be still said of it. As 
long as it holds its life in its hand, ready to give it for 
its honour (though a foolish honour), for its love (though 
a selfish love), and for its business (though a base busi- 
ness), there is hope for it. But hope only ; for this in- 
stinctive, reckless virtue cannot last. No nation can 
last, which has made a mob of itself, however generous 



52 SESAME AM) LILIES 

at heart. It must discipline its passions, and direct 
tliem, or tliey will discipline it, one day, with scorpion 
wliips. Above all, a nation cannot last as a money- 
making mob : it cannot with impunity, — it cannot with 
existence, — go on despising literature, despising science, 
despising art, despising nature, despising compassion, 
and concentrating its soul on Pence. Do you think 
these are harsh or wild words? Have patience with 
me but a little longer. I will prove their truth to you, 
clause by clause. 

I. I say first we have despised literature. What do 
we, as a nation, care about books ? How much do you 
think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or 
private, as compared with what we spend on our horses ? 
If a man spends lavishly on his library, you call him 
mad — a biblio-maniac. But you never call any one a 
horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day 
by their horses, and you do not hear of people ruining 
themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how 
much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of 
the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, 
as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars? 
What position would its expenditure on literature take, 
as compared with its expenditure on luxurious eating ? 



OF kings' tkeasukies. 53 

"We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the body : 
now a good book contains such food inexhaustibly ; it is 
a provision for life, and for the best part of us ; yet how 
long most people would look at the best book before 
they would give the price of a large turbot for it ! 
Though there have been men who have pinched their 
stomachs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose 
libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than 
most men's dinners are. "We are few of us put to such 
trial, and more the pity ; for, indeed, a precious thing is 
all the more precious to us if it has been won by work 
or economy ; and if public libraries were half as costly 
as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what 
bracelets do, even foolish men and women might some- 
times suspect there was good in reading, as well as in 
munching and sparkling ; whereas the very cheapness 
of literature is making even wise people forget that if a 
book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is 
worth anything which is not worth much ; nor is it ser- 
viceable, until it has been read, and reread, and loved, 
and loved again ; and marked, so that you can refer to 
the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the 
weapon he needs in an armoury, or a housewife bring 
the spice she needs from her store. Bread of flour is 



54 SESAME AND LILIES. 

good : but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would 
eat it, in a good book ; and the family must be poor 
indeed which, once in their lives, cannot, for such multi- 
pliable barley-loaves, pay their baker's bill. We call 
ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish 
enough to thumb each other's books out of circulating 
libraries ! 

n. I say we have despised science. "What! " (you 
exclaim) "are we not foremost in all discovery, and is 
not the whole world giddy by reason, or unreason, of 
our inventions?" Yes; but do you suppose that is 
national work ? That work is all done in spite of the 
nation ; by private people's zeal and money. We are 
glad enough, indeed, to make our profit of science ; we 
snap up anything in the way of a scientific bone that 
has meat on it, eagerly enough ; but if the scientific man 
comes for a bone or a crust to us, that is another story. 
What have we publicly done for science? We are 
obliged to know what o'clock it is, for the safety of our 
ships, and therefore we pay for an observatory ; and we 
allow ourselves, in the person of our Parliament, to be 
annually tormented into doing something, in a slovenly 
way, for the British Museum ; sullenly apprehending 
that to be a place for keeping stuffed birds in, to amuse 



55 

our cliildreu. If anybody will pay for their own telescope, 
and resolve another nebula, we cackle over the discern- 
ment as if it were our own ; if one in ten thousand of our 
hunting squires suddenly perceives that the earth was 
indeed made to be something else than a portion for 
foxes, and burrows in it himself, and tells us where the 
gold is, and where the coals, we understand that there 
is some use in that ; and very pro23erly knight him : but 
is the accident of his having found out how to employ 
himself usefully any credit to us? (The negation of 
such discovery among his brother squires may perhaps 
be some c?^scredit to us, if we would consider of it.) But 
if you doubt these generalities, here is one fact for us 
all to meditate upon, illustrative of our love of science. 
Two years ago there was a collection of the fossils of 
Solenhofen to be sold in Bavaria ; the best in existence, 
containing many specimens unique for perfectness, and 
one, unique as an example of a species (a whole king- 
dom of unknown living creatures being announced by 
that fossil). This collection, of which the mere market 
worth, among private buyers, would probably have been 
some thousand or twelve hundred pounds, was offered 
to the English nation for seven hundred : but we would 
not give seven hundred, and the whole series Avould 



56 SESAME AND LILIES. 

have been in tlie Munich Museum at this moment, if 
Professor Owen^" had not, with loss of his own time, and 
patient tormenting of the British public in person of its 
representatives, got leave to give four hundred pounds 
at once, and himself become answerable for the other 
three ! which the said public will doubtless paj him 
eventually, but sulkily, and caring nothing about the 
matter all the while ; only always ready to cackle if any 
credit comes of it. Consider, I beg of you, arithmeti- 
cally, what this fact means. Your annual expenditure 
for public purposes (a third of it for military apparatus) 
is at least fifty millions. Now 700?. is to 50,000,000?. 
roughly, as seven pence to two thousand pounds. Sup- 
pose then, a gentleman of unknown income, but whose 
wealth was to be conjectured from the fact that he spent 
two thousand a year on his park-walls and footmen only, 
professes himself fond of science ; and that one of his 
servants comes eagerly to tell him that an unique col- 
lection of fossils, giving clue to a new era of creation, is 
to be had for the sum of seven pence sterling ; and that 

* I state this fact without Professor Owen's permission : which of 
course he could not with propriety have granted, had I asked it ; but I 
consider it so important that the public should be aware of the fact, that 
I do what seems to be right though rude , 



or kings' treasuries. 57 

the gentleman, who is fond of science, and spends two 
thousand a year on his park, answers, after keeping his 
servant waiting several months, " Well ! I'll give you 
four pence for them, if you will be answerable for the 
extra three pence yourself, till next year ! " 

III. I say you have despised Art ! " What ! " you 
again answer, " have we not Art exhibitions, miles long? 
and do we not pay thousands of pounds for single pic- 
tures? and have we not Art schools and institutions, 
more than ever nation had before ? " Yes, truly, but all 
that is for the sake of the shop. You would fain sell 
canvas as well as coals, and crockery as well as iron ; 
you would take every other nation's bread out of its 
mouth if you could f not being able to do that, your 
ideal of life is to stand in the thoroughfares of the world, 
like Ludgate apprentices, screaming to every passer-by, 
*'What d'ye lack?" You know nothing of your own 
faculties or circumstances ; you fancy that, among your 
damp, flat, fields of clay, you can have as quick art-fancy 
as the Frenchman among his bronzed vines, or the 

^ That was our real idea of "Free Trade "— '* All the trade to myself." 
You find now that by ' ' competition " other people can manage to sell 
something as well as you — and now we call for Protection again. 
Wretches ! 

3* 



58 SESAME AND LTLIES. 

Italian under his volcanic cliffs; — tliat Art may be 
learned as book-keeping is, and when learned will give 
you more books to keep. You care for pictures/ abso- 
lutely, no more than you do for the bills pasted on your 
dead walls. There is always room on the walls for the 
bills to be read, — never for the pictures to be seen. 
You do not know what pictures you have (by repute) 
in the country, nor whether they are false or true, nor 
whether they are taken care of or not ; in foreign coun- 
tries, you calmly see the noblest existing pictures in the 
world rotting in abandoned wreck — (and, in Venice, with 
the Austrian guns deliberately pointed at the palaces 
containing them), and if you heard that all the Titians 
in Europe were made sand-bags to-morrow on the 
Austrian forts, it would not trouble you so much as the 
chance of a brace or two of game less in your own 
bags in a day's shooting. That is your national love 
of Art. 

IV. You have despised nature ; that is to say, all the 
deep and sacred sensations of natural scenery. The 
French revolutionists made stables of the cathedrals of 
France ; you have made racecourses of the cathedrals of 
the earth. Your one conception of pleasure is to drive 
in railroad carriages round their aisles, and eat off their 



OP kings' treasueies. 59 

altars.^ You have put a railroad bridge over the fall of 
Schaffhausen. You have tunnelled the cliffs of Lucerne 
by Tell's chapel ; you have destroyed the Clarens shore 
of the Lake of Geneva ; there is not a quiet valley in 
England that you have not filled with bellowing fire ; 
there is no particle left of English land which you have 
not trampled coal ashes into — nor any foreign city in 
which the spread of your presence is not marked among 
its fair old streets and happy gardens by a consuming 
white leprosy of new hotels and perfumers' shops : the 
Alps themselves, which your own poets used to love so 
reverently, you look upon as soaped poles in a bear- 
garden, which you set yourselves to climb, and slide 
down again, with " shrieks of delight." When you are 
past shrieking, having no human articulate voice to say 
you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys 
with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutane- 
ous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive, 
hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two 
sorrowfuUest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, 

* I meant that the beautiful places of the world — Switzerland, Italy, 
South Germany, and so on— are, indeed, the truest cathedrals — places 
to be reverent in, and to worship in ; and that we only care to drive 
through them : and to eat and drink at their most sacred places. 



60 SESAME AND LILIES. 

taking tlie deep inner significance of tliem, are the 
English mobs in the valley of Chamouni, amusing them- 
selves with firing rusty howitzers ; and the Swiss vint- 
agers of Zurich expressing their Christian thanks for 
the gift of the vine, by assembling in knots in the " tow- 
ers of the vineyards," and slowly loading and fii'ing 
horse-pistols from morning till evening. It is pitiful to 
have dim conceptions of beauty ; more pitiful, it seems 
to me, to have conceptions like these, of mirth. 

Lastly. You despise compassion. There is no need 
of words of mine for proof of this. I will merely print 
one of the newspaper paragraphs which I am in the 
habit of cutting out and throwing into my store-drawer ; 
here is one from a Daily Tekgrapli of an early date this 
year; date which though by me carelessly left un- 
marked, is easily discoverable, for on the back of the 
slip there is the announcement that "yesterday the 
seventh of the special services of this year was per- 
formed by the Bishop of Kipon in St. Paul's;" and 
there is a pretty piece of modern political economy be- 
sides, worth preserving note of, I think, so I print it in 
the note below.* But my business is with the main 

* It is announced that an arrangement has been concluded between 
the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Credit for the payment of the 



OF kings' treasuries. 61 

paragraph, relating one of such facts as happen now 
daily, which, by chance, has taken a form in which it 
came before the coroner. I will print the paragraph in 
recl.^ Be sure, the facts themselves are written in that 
colour, in a book which we shall all of us, literate or 
illiterate, have to read our page of, some day. 

" An inquiry was held on Friday by Mr. Kichards, 
deputy coroner, at the White Horse Tavern, Christ 
Church, Spitalfields, respecting the death of Michael 
Collins, aged 58 years. Mary Collins, a miserable- 
looking woman, said that she lived with the deceased 
and his son in a room at 2, Cobb's court, Christ Church. 
Deceased was a ' translator ' of boots. "Witness went 
out and bought old boots ; deceased and his son made 
them into good ones, and then witness sold them for 
what she could get at the shops, which was very little 
indeed. Deceased and his son used to work night and 

eleven millions which the State has to pay to the National Bank by the 
14th inst. This sum will be raised as follows : — The eleven commercial 
members of the committee of the Bank of Credit will each borrow a 
million of florins for three months of this bank, which will accept their 
bills, which again will be discounted by the National Bank. By this 
arrangement the National Bank will itself furnish the funds with 
which it will he paid. 
* The following extract was printed in red in the English edition. 



62 SESAME AND LILIES. 

day to try and get a little bread and tea, and j)ay for 
tlie room (2?. a week), so as to keep tlie home together. 
On Friday night week deceased got up from his bench 
and began to shiver. He threw down the boots, say- 
ing, ^ Somebody else must finish them when I am gone, 
for I can do no more.' There was no fire, and he said, 
*I would be better if I was warm.' Witness therefore 
took two pairs of translated boots* to sell at the shop, 
but she could only get 14c?. for the two pairs, for the 
people at the shop said, 'We must have our profit.' 
Witness got 141b. of coal, and a little tea and bread. 
Her son sat up the whole night to make the ' transla- 
tions,' to get money, but deceased died on Saturday 
morning. The family never had enough to eat. — Coroner : 
* It seems to me deplorable that you did not go into the 
workhouse.' — Witness : ' We wanted the comforts of our 
little home.' A juror asked what the comforts were, for 
he only saw a little straw in the corner of the room, the 
windows of which were broken. The witness began to 
cry, and said that they had a quilt and other little 
things. The deceased said he never would go into the 

* One of the things which we must very resolutely enforce, for the 
good of all classes, in our future arrangements, must be that they wear 
no " translated " articles of dress. See the preface. 



OF kings' treasuries. 63 

workhouse. In summer, when the season was good, 

they sometimes made as much as 10s. profit in the 

week. They then always saved towards the next week, 

which was generally a bad one. In winter they made 

not half so much. For three years they had been 

getting from bad to worse. — Cornelius Collins said that 

he had assisted his father since 1847. They used to work 

so far into the night that both nearly lost their eyesight. 

Witness now had a film over his eyes. Five years ago 

deceased applied to the parish for aid. The relieving 

oflScer gave him a 41b. loaf, and told him if he came 

again he should 'get the stones.'"^ That disgusted 

" This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labour is curiously co- 
incident in verbal form with a certain passage which some of us may 
remember. It may perhaps be well to preserve beside this paragraph 
another cutting out of my store-drawer, from the Morning Post, of 
about a parallel date, Friday, March 10th, 1865 : — " The salons of 
Mme. C , who did the honours with clever imitative grace and ele- 
gance, were crowded with princes, dukes, marquises, and counts — in 
fact, with the same male company as one meets at the parties of the 
Princess Metternich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some English 
peers and members of Parliament were present, and appeared to enjoy 
the animated and dazzlingly improper scene. On the second floor the 
supper tables were loaded with every delicacy of the season. That your 
readers may form some idea of the dainty fare of the Parisian demi- 
monde, I copy the menu of the supper, which was served to all the guests 
(about 200) seated at four o'clock. Choice Yquem, Johannisberg, Laf- 
fitte, Tokay, and Champagne of the finest vintages were served most 



64: SESAME AND LILIES. 

deceased, and lie would have nothing to do with them 
since. Thej got worse and worse until last Friday- 
week, when they had not even a halfpenny to buy a 
candle. Deceased then lay down on the straw, and said 
he could not live till morning. — A juror : You are dying 
of starvation yourself, and you ought to go into the 
house until the summer. Witness : If we went in we 
should die. When we come out in the summer we 
should be like people dropped from the sky. No one 
would know us, and we would not have even a room. 
I could work novv^ if I had food, for my sight would get 
better. Dr. G. P. Walker said deceased died from 
syncope, from exhaustion, from want of food. The de- 
ceased had had no bedclothes. For four months he 
had had nothing but bread to eat. There was not a 
particle of fat in the body. There was no disease, but 

lavishly throughout the mol-ning. After supper dancing was resumed 
with increased animation, and the ball terminated with a chaine dia- 
holique and a cancan (Tenfer at seven in the morning, (Morning- 
service — ' Ere the fresh lawns appeared, under the opening eyelids of 
the Morn. — ') Here is the menu : — ' Consomme de volaille a la Bagra- 
tion ; 16 hors-d'oeuvres vari''s. Bouchees a la Talleyrand. Saumons 
froids, sauce Ravigote. Filets de hcem. en Bellevue, timbales milanaises 
chaudfroid de gibier. Dindes truffees. Pates de foies gras, buissons 
d'ecrevisses, salades venetiennes, gelees blanches aux fruits, gafeaux 
mancini, parisiens et parisiennes. Fromages glaces Ananas. Dessert.' ' 



OF kings' treasuries. 65 

if there had been medical attendance, he might have 
survived the syncope or fainting. The coroner having 
remarked upon the painful nature of the case, the jury 
returned the following verdict, * That deceased died 
from exhaustion from want of food and the common 
necessaries of life ; also through want of medical aid.' " 
*' Why would witness not go into the workhouse ? " 
you ask. Well, the poor seem to have a prejudice 
against the workhouse which the rich have not ; for of 
course .every one who takes a pension from Government 
goes into the workhouse on a grand scale : only the 
workhouses for the rich do not involve the idea of work, 
and should be called play-houses. But the poor like 
to die independently, it appears ; perhaps if we made 
the play-houses for them pretty and pleasant enough, 
or gave them their pensions at home, and allowed them 
a little introductory peculation with the public money, 
their minds might be reconciled to it. Meantime, here 
are the facts : we make our relief either so insulting to 
them, or so painful, that they rather die than take it at 
our hands.; or, for third alternative, we leave them so 
untaught and foolish that they starve like brute crea- 
tures, wild and dumb, not knowing what to do, or what 
to ask. I say, you despise compassion ; if you did not. 



66 SESAME AND LILIES, 

such a newspaper paragraph would be as impossible in 
a Christian country as a deliberate assassination per- 
mitted in its public streets."^ ** Christian " did I say ? 

" I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the Pall Mall Gazette 
established ; for the power of the press in the hands of highly-educated 
men, in independent position, and of honest purpose, may indeed be- 
come all that it has been hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its editor will 
therefore, I doubt not, pardon me, in that, by very reason of my respect 
for the journal, I do not let pass unnoticed an article in its third num- 
ber, page 5, which was wrong in every word of it, with the intense 
wrongness which only an honest man can achieve who Jias taken a false 
turn of thought in the outset, and is following it, regardless of conse- 
quences. It contained at the end this notable passage : — 

"The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction — aye, and the bed- 
steads and blankets of affliction, are the very utmost that the law ought 
to give to outcasts merely as outcasts." I merely put beside this ex- 
pression of the gentlemanly mind of England in 1865, a part of the 
message which Isaiah was ordered to '* lift up his voice like a trumpet" 
in declaring to the gentlemen of his day : *' Ye fast for strife, and to 
smite with the fist of wickedness. Is not this the fast that I have 
chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor 
that are cast out (margin ' afflicted ') to thy house." The falsehood on 
which the writer had mentally founded himself, as previously stated by 
him, was this : *'To confound the functions of the dispensers of the 
poor-rates with those of the dispensers of a charitable institution is a 
great and pernicious error. " This sentence is so accurately and ex- 
quisitely wrong, that its substance must be thus reversed in our minds 
before we can deal with any existing problem of national distress. " To 
understand that the dispensers of the poor-rates are the almoners of the 
nation, and should distribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom of 
hand as much greater and franker than that possible to individual 



OF kings' tbeasuries. 67 

Alas, if we were but wholesomely un-Cliristian, it would 
be impossible : it is our imaginary Christianity that 
helps us to commit these crimes, for we revel and lux- 
uriate in our faith, for the lewd sensation of it ; dress- 
ing it up, like everything else, in fiction. The dramatic 
Christianity of the organ and aisle, of dawn-service and 
twilight-revival — the Christianity which we do not fear 
to mix the mockery of, pictorially, with our play about 
the devil, in our Satanellas, — Eoberts, — Fausts, chant- 
ing hymns through traceried windows for back-ground 
effect, and artistically modulating the " Dio " through 
variation on variation of mimicked prayer : (while we 
distribute tracts, next day, for the benefit of unculti- 
vated swearers, upon what we suppose to be the signi- 
fication of the Third Commandment ;) — this gas-lighted, 
and gas-inspired, Christianity, we are trium]3hant in, 
and draw back the hem of our robes from the touch of 
the heretics who dispute it. But to do a piece of com- 
mon Christian righteousness in a plain English word 
or deed; to make Christian law any rule of life, and 
found one National act or hope thereon, — we know too 

charity, as the collective national wisdom and power may be supposed 
greater than those of any single person, is the foundation of all law re- 
specting pauperism," 



68 SESAME AND LILIES. 

well what our faith comes to for that ! You might 
sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true 
action or passion out of your modern English religion. 
You had better get rid of the smoke, and the organ 
pipes, both : leave them, and the Gothic windows, and 
the painted glass, to the property man ; give up your 
carburetted hydrogen ghost in one healthy expiration, 
and look after Lazarus at the door-step. For there is 
a true Church wherever one hand meets another help- 
fully, and that is the only holy or Mother Church which 
ever was, or ever shall be. 

All these pleasures, then, and all these virtues, I re- 
peat, you nationally despise. You have, indeed, men 
among you who do not ; by whose work, by whose 
strength, by whose life, by whose death, you live, 
and never thank them. Your wealth, your amuse- 
ment, your pride, would all be alike impossible, but 
for those whom you scorn or forget. The police- 
man, who is walking up and down the black lane all 
night to watch the guilt you have created there, and 
may have his brains beaten out and be maimed for life 
at any moment, and never be thanked ; the sailor wrest- 
' ling with the sea's rage ; the quiet student poring over 
his book or his vial; the common worker, without 



OF kings' teeasukies. 69 

praise, and nearly without bread, fulfilling his task as 
your horses drag your carts, hopeless, and spurned of 
all : these are the men by whom England lives ; but 
they are not the nation ; they are only the body and 
nervous force of it, acting still from old habit in a 
convulsive perseverance, while the mind is gone. Our 
National mind and purpose are to be amused ; our Na- 
tional religion, the performance of church ceremonies, 
and preaching of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep 
the mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves; 
and the necessity for this amusement is fasteniug on us 
as a feverous disease of parched throat and wandering 
eyes — senseless, dissolute, merciless. When men are 
rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their 
work, as the colour-petals out of a fruitful flower; — 
when they are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all 
their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and 
vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to the kody. 
But now, having no true business, we pour our whole 
masculine energy into the false business of money-mak- 
ing ; and having no true emotion, we must have false 
emotions dressed up for us to play with, not innocently, 
as children with dolls, but guiltily and darkly, as the 
idolatrous Jews with their pictures on cavern walls, 



70 SESAME AND LILIES. 

whicli men had to dig to detect. The justice we do not 
execute, we mimic in the novel and on the stage ; for 
the beauty we destroy in nature, we substitute the met- 
amorphosis of the pantomime, and (the human nature 
of us imperatively requiring awe and sorrow of some 
kind) for the noble grief we should have borne with our 
fellows, and the pure tears we should have wept with 
them, we gloat over the pathos of the police court, and 
gather the night-dew of the grave. 

It is difficult to estimate the true significance of these 
things ; the facts are frightful enough ; — the measure of 
national fault involved in them is perhaps not as great 
as it would at first seem. "We permit, or cause, thou- 
sands of deaths daily, but we mean no harm ; we set fire 
to houses, and ravage peasants' fields ; yet we should 
be sorry to find we had injured anybody. "We are still 
kind at heart ; still capable of virtue, but only as 
chil(fi:en are. Chalmers, at the end of his long life, 
having had much power with the public, being plagued 
in some serious matter by a reference to " public opin- 
ion," uttered the impatient exclamation, " The public is 
just a great baby ! " And the reason that I have al- 
lowed all these graver subjects of thought to mix them- 
selves up with an inquiry into methods of reading, is 



OF kings' treasuries. 71 

that, the more I see of our national faults and miseries, 
the more they resolve themselves into conditions of 
childish ilKterateness, and want of education in the 
most ordinary habits of thought. It is, I repeat, not 
vice, not selfishness, not dulness of brain, which we 
have to lament ; but an unreachable schoolboy's reck- 
lessness, only differing from the true schoolboy's in its 
incapacity of being helped, because it acknowledges no 
master. There is a curious type of us given in one of 
the lovely, neglected works of the last of our great 
painters. It is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale church- 
yard, and of its brook, and valley, and hills, and folded 
morning sky beyond. And unmindful alike of these, 
and of the dead who have left these for other valleys 
and for other skies, a group of schoolboys have piled 
their little books upon a grave, to strike them off with 
stones. So do we play with the words of the dead that 
would teach us, and strike them far from us with our 
bitter, reckless will, little thinking that those leaves 
which the wind scatters had been piled, not only upon 
a gravestone, but upon the seal of an enchanted vault 
— nay, the gate of a great city of sleeping kings, who 
would awake for us, and walk v/ith us, if we knew but 
how to call them by their names. How often, even if 



T2 SESAME AND LILIES. 

we lift tlie marble entrance gate, do we but wander 
among those old kings in their repose, and finger the 
robes they lie in, and stir the crowns on their foreheads ; 
and still they are silent to us, and seem but a dusty 
imagery ; because we know not the incantation of the 
heart that would wake them ; — which, if they once 
heard, they would start up to meet us in their power 
of long ago, narrowly to look upon us, and consider us ; 
and, as the fallen kings. of Hades meet the newly fallen, 
saying, " Art thou also become weak as we — art thou 
also become one of us ? " so would these kings, with 
their undimmed, unshaken diadems, meet us, saying, 
" Art thou also become pure and mighty of heart as 
we? art thou also become one of us? " 

Mighty of heart, mighty of mind — " magnanimous " 
— ^to be this, is indeed to be great in life ; to become 
this increasingly, is, indeed, to "advance in life," — in 
life itself — not in the trappings of it. * My friends, do 
you remember that old Scythian custom, when the head 
of a house died? How he Avas dressed in his finest 
dress, and set in his chariot, and carried about to his 
friends' houses ; and each of them placed him at his 
table's head, and all feasted in his presence ? Suppose 
it were offered to you, in plain words, as it is ofiered to 



OF kings' treasubies. 73 

you in dire facts, that you should gain this Scythian 
honour, gradually, while you yet thought yourself alive. 
Suppose the offer were this: "You shall die slowly; 
your blood shall daily grow cold, your flesh petrify, your 
heart beat at last only as a rusted group of iron valves. 
Your life shall fade from you, and sink through the 
earth into the ice of Caina ; but, day by day, your body 
shall be dressed more gaily, and set in higher chariots, 
and have more orders on its breast — crowns on its 
head, if you will. Men shall bow before it, stare and 
shout round it, crowd after it up and down the streets ; 
build palaces for it, feast with it at their tables' heads 
all the night long ; your soul shall stay enough within 
it to know what they do, and feel the weight of the 
golden dress on its shoulders, and the furrow of the 
crown-edge on the skull ; — no more. Would you take 
the ofl'sr, verbally made by the death-angel ? Would 
the meanest among us take it, think you? Yet prac- 
tically and verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a 
measure ; many of us grasp at it in its fulness of horror. 
Every man accepts it, who desires to advance in life 
without knowing what life is ; who means only that he 
is to get more horses, and more footmen, and more for- 
tune, and more public honour, and — not more personal 



74: SESAME AND LILIES. 



soul. I He only is advancing in life, whose heart is 
getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, 
whose spirit is entering into Living* peace. I And the 
men who have this life in them are the true lords or 
kings of the earth — they, and they only. All other 
kingships, so far as they are true, are only the practical 
issue and expression of theirs ; if less than this, they 
are either dramatic royalties, — costly shows, with real 
jewels instead of tinsel — the toys of nations ; or else, 
they are no royalties at all, but tyrannies, or the mere 
active and practical issue of national folly ; for which 
reason I have said of them elsewhere, " Visible govern- 
ments are the toys of some nations, the diseases of 
others, the harness of some, the burdens of more." 

But I have no words for the wonder with which I 
hear Kinghood still spoken of, even among thoughtful 
men, as if governed nations were a personal property, 
and might be bought and sold, or otherwise acquired, 
as sheep, of whose flesh their king was to feed, and 
whose fleece he was to gather ; as if Achilles' indignant 
epithet of base kings, "people-eating," were the con- 
stant and proper title of all monarchs ; and enlarge- 
ment of a king's dominion meant the same thing as the 
* " ro de (ppovij^a xov itv ev ^ar o'i ^oarj xai Eipijvrj.^* 



OF kings' tbeasuries. 75 

increase of a private man's estate ! Kings who think 
so, however powerful, can no more be the true kings of 
the nation than gad-flies are the kings of a horse ; they 
suck it, and may drive it wild, but do not guide it. 
They, and their courts, and their armies are, if one 
could see clearly, only a large species of marsh mos- 
quito, with bayonet proboscis and melodious, band- 
mastered, trumpeting in the summer air ; the twilight 
being, perhaps, sometimes fairer, but hardly more whole- 
some, for its glittering mists of midge companies. The 
true kings, meanwhile, rule quietly, if at all, and hate 
ruling ; too many of them make " il gran refiuto ; " and 
if they do not, the mob, as soon as they are likely to 
become useful to it, is pretty sure to make its " gran 
refiuto " of them. 

Yet the visible king may also be a true one, some 
day, if ever day comes when he will estimate his do- 
minion by the force of it, — not the geographical boun- 
daries. It matters very little whether Trent cuts you a 
cantel out here, or Rhine rounds you a castle less there. 
But it does matter to you, king of men, whether you 
can verily say to this man, " Go," and he goeth ; and to 
another, "Come," and he cometh. Whether you can 
turn your people as you can Trent — and where it is 



76 SESAME AND LILIES. 

that you bid them come, and where go. It matters to 
you, king of men, whether your people hate you, and 
die by you, or love you, and live by you. You may 
measure your dominion by multitudes better than by 
miles ; and count degrees of love latitude, not from, but 
to, a wonderfully warm and infinite equator. Measure ! 
nay you cannot measure. \ Who shall measure the dif- 
ference between the power of those who "do and teach," 
and who are greatest in the kingdonis of earth, as of 
heaven — and the power of those who undo, and consume 
— whose power, at the fullest, is only the power of the 
moth and the rust ? { Strange ! to think how the Moth- 
kings lay up treasures for the moth, and the Rust-kings, 
who are to their peoples' strength as rust to armour, 
lay up treasures for the rust ; and the Robber-kings, 
treasures for the robber ; but how few kings have ever 
laid up treasures that needed no guarding — treasures 
of which, the more thieves there were, the better! 
Broidered robe, only to be rent — helm and sword, only 
to be dimmed ; jewel and gold, only to be scattered — 
there have been three kinds of kings who have gathered 
these. Suppose there ever should arise a Fourth order 
of kings, who had read, in some obscure writing of long 
ago, that there was a Fourth kind of treasure, which 



OF kings' TREASUKIES. 77 

the jewel and gold could not equal, neither should it be 
valued with pure gold. A web more fair in the weaving, 
by Athena's shuttle ; an armour, forged in diviner fire 
by Yulcanian force — a gold only to be mined in the 
sun's red heart, where he sets over the Delphian cliffs ; 
— deep-pictured tissue, impenetrable armour, potable 
gold! — the three great Angels of Conduct, Toil, and 
Thought, still calling to us, and waiting at the posts of 
our doors, to lead us, if we would, with their winged 
power, and guide us, with their inescapable eyes, by 
the path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's 
eye has not seen ! Suppose kings should ever arise, 
who heard and believed this word, and at last gathered 
and brought forth treasures of — ^Wisdom — for their 
people ? . 

Think what an amazing business that would be ! How 
inconceivable, in the state of our present national wis- 
dom. That we should bring up our peasants to a book 
exercise instead of a bayonet exercise ! — organize, drill, 
maintain with pay, and good generalship, armies of 
thinkers, instead of armies of stabbers ! — find national 
amusement in reading-rooms as well as rifle-grounds ; 
give prizes for a fair shot at a fact, as well as for a 
leaden splash on a target. What an absurd idea it 



78 SESAME AND LILIES. 

seems, put fairly in words, that the wealth of the capi- 
talists of civilized nations should ever come to support 
literature instead of war ! Have yet patience with me, 
while I read you a single sentence out of the only book, 
properly to be called a book, that I have yet written 
myself, the one that will stand, (if anything stand,) 
surest and longest of all work of mine. 

'^ It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in 
Europe that it is entirely capitalists' wealth which supports 
unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much money to sup- 
port them ; for most of the men who wage such, wage them 
gratis ; but for an unjust war, men's bodies and souls have 
both to be bought; and the best tools of war for them be- 
sides, which makes such war costly to the maximum ; not to 
speak of the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion, between 
nations which have not grace nor honesty enough in all their 
multitudes to buy an hour's peace of mind with ; *as, at pres- 
ent France and England, purchasing of each other ten mil- 
lions' sterling worth of consternation, annually (a remarkably 
light crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves, sown, reaped, 
and gTanaried by the 'science' of the modern political econo- 
mist, teaching covetousness instead of truth). And, all un- 
just war being supportable, if not by pillage of the enemy, 
only by loans from capitalists, these loans are repaid by sub- 
sequent taxation of the people, who appear to have no will in 
the matter, the capitalists' will being the primary root of the 
war ; but its real root is the covetousness of the whole nation, 



OF kings' treasueies. 79 

rendering it incapable of faith, frankness, or justice, and 
bringing about, therefore, in due time, bis own separate loss 
and punisbment to eacb person." 

France and England literally, observe, buy panic of 
each other ; they pay, each of them, for ten thousand 
thousand pounds' worth of terror, a year. Now sup- 
pose, instead of buying these ten millions' worth of 
panic annually, they made up their minds to be at peace 
with each other, and buy ten millions' worth of knowl- 
edge annually ; and that each nation spent its ten thou- 
sand thousand pounds a year in founding royal libraries, 
royal art galleries, royal museums, royal gardens, and 
places of rest. Might it not be better somewhat for 
both French and English ? 

It will be long, yet, before that comes to pass. Never- 
theless, I hope it will not be long before royal or na- 
tional libraries will be founded in every considerable city, 
with a royal series of books in them ; the same series in 
every one of them, chosen books, the best in every kind, 
prepared for that national series in the most perfect 
way possible ; their text printed all on leaves of equal 
size, broad of margin, and divided into pleasant volumes, 
light in the hand, beautiful, and strong, and thorough 
as examples of binders' work ; and that these great li- 



80 SESAME AND LILIES. 

braries will be accessible to all clean and orderly per- 
sons at all times of the day and evening ; strict law 
being enforced for this cleanliness and quietness. 

I could shape for you other plans, for art-galleries, 
and for natural history galleries, and for many precious, 
many, it seems to me, needful, things ; but this book 
plan is the easiest and needfuUest, and would prove a 
considerable tonic to what we call our British constitu- 
tion, which has fallen dropsical of late, and has an evil 
thirst, and evil hunger, and wants healthier feeding. 
You have got its corn laws repealed for it ; try if you 
cannot get corn laws established for it, dealing in a bet- 
ter bread ; — bread made of that old enchanted Arabian 
grain, the Sesame, which opens doors ; — doors, not of 
robbers', but of Kings' Treasuries. 

Friends, the treasuries of true kings are the streets 
of their cities; and the gold they gather, which for 
others is as the mire of the streets, changes itself, for 
them and their people, into a crystalline pavement for 
evermore. 



LECTUEE II.— LILIES. 

OF queens' gabdens. 

"Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert; let the desert be made cheerful, 
and bloom as the lily ; and the barren places of Jordan shall run wild 
with wood ." — Isaiah 35, i . (Septuagint .) 

It will, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture is the sequel 
of one previously given, that I should shortly state to 
you my general intention in both. The questions spe- 
cially proposed to you in the first, namely, How and What 
to Read, rose out of a far deeper one, which it was my 
endeavour to make you propose earnestly to yourselves, 
namely, Why to Read. I want you to feel, with me, 
that whatever advantages we possess in the present day 
in the diffusion of education and of literature, can only 
be rightly used by any of us when we have apprehended 
clearly what education is to lead to, and literature to 
teach. I wish you to see that both well-directed moral 
training and well-chosen reading lead to the possession 
of a power over the ill-guided and illiterate, which is, 
according to the measure of it, in the truest sense, 
kingly ; conferring indeed the purest kingship that can 

exist among men : too many other kingships (however 
4* 81 



82 SESAME AND LILIES. 

distinguished by visible insignia or material power) 
being either spectral, or tyrannous ; — Spectral — that is 
to say, aspects and shadows only of royalty, hollow as 
death, and which only the " Likeness of a kingly crown 
have on;" or else tyrannous — that is to say, substi- 
tuting their own will for the law of justice and love by 
which all true kings rule. 

There is, then, I repeat — and as I want to leave this 
idea with you, I begin with it, and shall end with it — 
only one pure kind of kingship ; an inevitable and eter- 
nal kind, crowned or not : the kingship, namely, which 
consists in a stronger moral state, and a truer thoughtful 
state, than that of others ; enabling you, therefore, to 
guide, or to raise them, j Observe that word " State ; " 
we have got into a loose w^ay of using it. It means lit- 
erally the standing and stability of a thing ; and you 
have the full force of it in the derived word " statue " — 
" the immoveable thing." A king's majesty or " state," 
then, and the right of his kingdom to be called a state, 
depends on the movelessness of both : — without tremor, 
without quiver of balance ; established and enthroned 
upon a foundation of eternal law which nothing can 
alter nor overthrow. 

Believing that all literature and all education are 



OF queens' gaedens. 83 

only useful so far as they tend to confirm this calm, 
beneficent, and therefore kingly, power — first, over our- 
selves, and, through ourselves, over all around us, I am 
now going to ask you to consider with me farther, what 
special portion or kind of this royal authority, arising 
out of noble education, may rightly be possessed by 
women; and how far they also are called to a true 
queenly power. Not in their households merely, but 
over all within their sphere. And in what sense, if 
they rightly understood and exercised this royal or gra- 
cious influence, the order and beauty induced by such 
benignant power would justify us in speaking of the 
territories over which each of them reigned, as " Queens' 
Gardens." 

And here, in the very outset, we are met by a far 
deeper question, which — strange though this may seem 
— remains among many of us yet quite undecided, in 
spite of its infinite importance. 

We cannot determine what the queenly power of 
women should be, until we are agreed what their ordi- 
nary power should be. We cannot consider how educa- 
tion may fit them for any widely extending duty, until 
we are agreed what is their true constant duty. And 
there never was a time when wilder words were spoken. 



84 SESAME AND LTLIES. 

or more vain imagination permitted, respecting this 
question — quite vital to all social happiness. The rela- 
tions of the womanly to the manly natui*e, their different 
capacities of intellect or of virtue, seem never to have 
been yet measured with entire consent. "We hear of the 
mission and of the rights of "Woman, as if these could 
ever be separate from the mission and the rights of 
Man ; — as if she and her lord were creatures of inde- 
pendent kind and of irreconcileable claim. This, at 
least, is wrong. And not less wrong — perhaps even 
more foolishly wrong (for I will anticipate thus far what 
I hope to prove)^is the idea that woman is only the 
shadow and attendanF image of her lord, owing him a 
thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported alto- 
gether in her weakness by the pre-eminence of his 
fortitude. J 

This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting } 
her who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he 
could be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by 
a slave ! 

Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some clear 
and harmonious idea (it must be harmonious if it is true) 
of what womanly mind and virtue are in power and 
oflSice, with respect to man's ; and how their relations. 



OF queens' gaedens. 85 

rightly accepted, aid, and increase, the yigour, and 
honour, and authority of both. 

And now I must repeat one thing I said in the last 
lecture : namely, that the first use of education was to 
enable us to consult with the wisest and the greatest men 
on all points of earnest difficulty. That to use books 
rightly, was to go to them for help : to appeal to them, 
when our own knowledge and power of thought failed ; 
to be led by them into wider sight, purer conception 
than our own, and receive from them the united sen- 
tence of the judges and councils of all time, against our 
solitary and unstable opinion. 

Let us do this now. Let us see whether the greatest, 
the wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages are agreed in 
any wise on this point : let us hear the testimony they 
have left respecting what they held to be the true dig- 
nity of woman, and her mode of help to man. 

And first let us take Shakespeare. 

Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has no he- 
roes ; — he has only heroines. There is not one entirely 
heroic figure in all his plays, except the slight sketch of 
Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes of the 
stage ; and the still slighter Yalentine in The Two 
Gentlemen of Yerona. In his laboured and perfect 



86 SESAME AND LILIES. 

plays you have no hero. Othello would have beon one, 
if his simplicity had not been so great as to leave him 
the prey of every base practice round him ; but he is 
the only example even approximating to the heroic type. 
Coriolanus — Caesar — Antony, stand in flawed strength, 
and fall by their vanities ; — Hamlet is indolent, and 
drowsily speculative ; Eomeo an impatient boy ; the 
Merchant of Yenice languidly submissive to adverse for- 
tune ; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely noble at heart, 
but too rough and unpolished to be of true use at the 
critical time, and he sinks into the office of a servant 
only. Orlando, no less noble, i§ yet the despairing toy 
of chance, followed, comforted, saved, by Eosalind. 
"Whereas there is hardly a play that has not a perfect 
woman in it, steadfast in grave hope, and errorless pur- 
pose ; Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, Imo- 
gen, Queen Katherine, Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, Eosalind, 
Helena, and last, and perhaps loveliest, Yirgilia, are all 
faultless ; conceived in the highest heroic type of hu- 
manity. 

Then observe, secondly, 

The catastrophe of every play is caused always by 
the folly or fault of a man ; the redemption, if there be 
any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and fail- 



OF queens' gakdens. 87 

ing that, there is none. The catastrophe of King Lear 
is owing to his own want of judgment, his impatient 
vanity, his misunderstanding of his children ; the virtue 
of his one true daughter would have saved him from all 
the injuries of the others, unless he had cast her away 
from him ; as it is, she all but saves him. 

Of Othello I need not trace the tale ; — nor the one 
weakness of his so mighty love ; nor the inferiority of 
his perceptive intellect to that even of the second 
woman character in the play, the Emilia vv^ho dies in wild 
testimony against his error : — " Oh, murderous coxcomb ! 
"What should such a fool Do with so good a wife? " 

In Eomeo and Juliet, the wise and entirely brave 
stratagem of the wife is brought to ruinous issue by the 
reckless impatience of her husband. In Winter's Tale, 
and in Cymbeline, the happiness and existence of two 
princely households, lost through long years, and im- 
perilled to the death by the folly and obstinacy of the 
husbands, are redeemed at last by the queenly patience 
and wisdom of the wives. In Measure for Measure, the 
injustice of the judges, and the corrupt cowardice of the 
brother, are opposed to the victorious truth and ada- 
mantine purity of a woman. In Coriolanus, the mother's 
counsel, acted upon in time, would have saved her son 



m SESAME iJND LILIES. 

from all evil ; his momeritary forgetfulness of it is his 
ruin ; her prayer at last granted, saves him — not, indeed, 
from death, but from the curse of living as the destroyer 
of his country. 

And what shall I say of Julia, constant against the 
fickleness of a lover v/ho is a mere wicked child ? — of 
Helena, against the petulance and insult of a careless 
youth? — of the patience of Hero, the passion of Bea- 
trice, and the calmly devoted wisdom of the " unlessoned 
girl," who appears among the helplessness, the blind- 
ness, and the vindictive, passions of men, as a gentle 
angel, to save merely by her presence, and defeat the 
worst intensities of crime by her smile ? 

Observe, further, among all the principal figures in 
Shakespeare's plays, there is only one weak woman — 
Ophelia ; and it is because she fails Hamlet at the crit- 
ical moment, and is not, and cannot in her nature be, a 
guide to him when he needs her most, that all the bitter 
catastrophe follows. Finally, though there are three 
wicked women among the principal figures. Lady 
Macbeth, Began, and Goneril, they are felt at once to be 
frightful exceptions to the ordinary laws of life : fatal in 
their influence also in proportion to the power for good 
which they have abandoned. 



OF queens' gardens. 89 

Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare's testimony to 
the position and character of women in human life. He 
represents them as infallibly faithful and wise counsel- 
lors, — incorruptibly just and pure examples — strong 
always to sanctify, even when they cannot save. 

Not as in any wise comparable in knowledge of the 
nature of man, — still less in his understanding of the 
causes and courses of fate, — but only as the writer who 
has given us the broadest view of the conditions and 
modes of ordinary thought in modern society, I ask you 
next to receive the witness of Walter Scott. 

I put aside his merely romantic prose writings as of 
no value : and though the early romantic poetry is very 
beautiful, its testimony is of no weight, other than that 
of a boy's ideal. But his true works, studied from 
Scottish life, bear a true witness, and in the whole range 
of these there are but three men who reach the heroic 
type^" — Dandie Dinmont, Rob Roy, and Claverhouse : 

* I ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, to have 
noted the various weaknesses which lower the ideal of other great 
characters of men in the Waverley novels — the selfishness and narrow- 
ness of thought in Redgauntlet, the weak religious enthusiasm in 
Edward Glendenning, and the like ; and I ought to have noticed that 
there are several quite perfect characters sketched sometimes in the 
backgrounds ; three — let us accept joyously this courtesy to Engb.nd 



90 SESAME AND LILIES. 

of these, one is a border farmer ; another a freebooter ; 
tlie third a soldier in a bad cause. And these touch 
the ideal of heroism only in their courage and faith, 
together with a strong, but uncultivated, or mistakenly 
applied, intellectual power ; while his younger men are 
the gentlemanly playthings of fantastic fortune, and only 
by aid (or accident) of that fortune, survive, not van- 
quish, the trials they involuntarily sustain. Of any 
disciplined, or consistent character, earnest in a purpose 
wisely conceived, or dealing with forms of hostile evil, 
definitely challenged, and resolutely subdued, there is 
no trace in his conceptions of men. "Whereas in his 
imaginations of women, — in the characters of Ellen 
Douglas, of Flora Maclvor, Rose Bradwardine, Cathe- 
rine Seyton, Diana Yernon, Lilias Redgauntlet, Alice 
Bridgenorth, Alice Lee, and Jeanie Deans, — with end- 
less varieties of grace, tenderness, and intellectual power 
we find in all a quite infallible and inevitable sense 
of dignity and justice ; a fearless, instant, and untiring 
self-sacrifice to even the appearance of duty, much more 
to its real claims ; and, finally, a patient wisdom of 
deeply restrained affection, which does infinitely more 

and her soldiers — are English ofiBcers : Colonel Gardiner, Colonel Talbot, 
and Colonel Mannering. 



OF queens' gakdens. 91 

than protect its objects from a momentary error; it 
gradually forms, animates, and exalts the characters of 
the unworthy lovers, until, at the close of the tale, we 
are just able, and no more, to take patience in hearing 
of their unmerited success. 

So that in all cases, with Scott as with Shakespeare, 
it is the woman who watches over, teaches, and. guides 
the youth ; it is never, by any chance, the youth who 
watches over or educates his mistress. 

Next, take, though more briefly, graver and deeper 
testimony — that of the great Italians and Greeks. You 
know well the plan of Dante's great poem — that it is a 
love-poem to his dead lady, a song of praise for her 
watch over his soul. Stooping only to pity, never to 
love, she yet saves him from destruction — saves him 
from hell. He is going eternally astray in despair ; she 
comes down from heaven to his help, and throughout the 
ascents of Paradise is his teacher, interpreting for him 
the most difficult truths, divine and human, and leading 
him, with rebuke upon rebuke, from star to star. 

I do not insist upon Dante's conception ; if I began I 
could not cease : besides, you might think this a wild 
imagination of one poet's heart. So I will rather read 
to you a few verses of the deliberate writing of a knight 



92 SESAME AND LILIES. 

of Pisa to his living lady, wholly characteristic of the 
feeling of all the noblest men of the thirteenth century, 
preserved among many other such records of knightly 
honour and love, which Dante Rossetti has gathered for 
us from among the early Italian poets. 

Por lo ! thy law is passed 
That this my love should manifestly be 

To serve and honour thee : 
And so I do ; and my delight is full. 
Accepted for the servant of thy rule. 

Without almost, I am all rapturous. 

Since thus my will was set 
To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence : 
Nor ever seems it anything could rouse 

A pain or regret, 
But on thee dwells mine every thought and sense : 
Considering that from thee all virtues spread 

As from a fountain head,— 
That in thy gift is ivisdom's lest avail, 

And honour without fail; 
With whom each sovereign good dwells separate. 
Fulfilling the perfection of thy state. 

Lady, since I conceived 
Thy pleasurable aspect in my heart, 

3fy life has heen apart 
In shining brightness and the place of truth; 



or queens' gabdens. 93 

"Which till that time, good sooth, 
Groped among shadows in a darkened place. 

Where many hours and days 
It hardly ever had remember'd good. 

But now my servitude 
Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest. 

A man from a wild beast 
Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived. 

You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight would have 
had a lower estimate of women than this Christian lover. 
His own spiritual subjection to them was indeed not so 
absolute ; but as regards their own personal character, 
it was only because you could not have followed me so 
easily, that I did not take the Greek women instead of 
Shakespeare's ; and instance, for chief ideal types of 
human beauty and faith, the simple mother's and wife's 
heart of Andromache ; the divine, yet rejected wisdom 
of Cassandra ; the playful kindness and simple princess- 
life of happy Nausicaa; the housewifely calm of that of 
Penelope, with its watch upon the sea ; the ever patient, 
fearless, hopelessly devoted piety of the sister, and 
daughter, in Antigone ; the bowing down of Iphigenia, 
lamb-like and silent ; and, finally, the expectation of 
the resurrection, made clear to the soul of the Greeks 
in the return from her grave of that Alcestis, who, to 



94 SESAME AI5D LILIES. 

save her husband, had passed calmly through the bit- 
terness of death. 

Now I could multiply witness upon witness of this 
kind upon you if I had time. I would take Chaucer, 
and show you why he wrote a Legend of Good Women ; 
but no Legend of Good Men. I would take Spenser, 
and show you how all his fairy knights are sometimes 
deceived and sometimes vanquished; but the soul of 
Una is never darkened, and the spear of Britomart is 
never broken. Nay, I could go back into the mythical 
teaching of the most ancient times, and show you how 
the great people, — by one of whose princesses it was 
appointed that the Lawgiver of all the earth should be 
educated, rather than by his own kindred ; — how that 
great Egyptian people, wisest then of nations, gave to 
their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a woman ; and into 
her hand, for a symbol, the weaver's shuttle : and how the 
name and the form of that spirit, adopted, believed, and 
obeyed by the Greeks, became that Athena of the olive- 
helm, and cloudy shield, to whose faith you owe, down 
to this date, whatever you hold most precious in art, in 
literature, or in types of national virtue. 

But I will not wander into this distant and mythical 
element ; I will only ask you to give its legitimate value 



OF queens' gardens. 95 

to the testimony of these great poets and men of the 
world, — consistent as you see it is on this head. I will 
ask you whether it can be supposed that these men, in 
the main work of their lives, are amusing themselves 
with a fictitious and idle view of the relations between 
man and woman ; — nay, worse than fictitious or idle ; for 
a thing may be imaginary, yet desirable, if it were pos- 
sible ; but this, their ideal of women, is, according to 
our common idea of the marriage relation, wholly unde- 
sirable. The woman, we say, is not to guide, nor even 
to think, for herself. The man is always to be the wiser ; 
he is to be the thinker, the ruler, the superior in knowl- 
edge and discretion, as in power. Is it not somewhat 
important to make up our minds on this matter ? Are 
all these great men mistaken, or are we ? Are Shake- 
speare and ^schylus, Dante and Homer, merely dress- 
ing dolls for us ; or, worse than dolls, unnatural visions, 
the realization of which, were it possible, would bring 
anarchy into all households and ruin into all affections ? 
Nay, if you could suppose this, take lastly the evidence 
of facts, given by the human heart itself. In all Chris- 
tian ages which have been remarkable for their purity 
or progress, there has been absolute yielding of obedient 
devotion, by the lover, to his mistress. I say obedient — 



96 SESAME AND LILIES. 

not merely enthusiastic and worsliipping in imagination, 
but entirely subject, receiving from the beloved woman, 
however young, not only the encouragement, the praise, 
and the reward of all toil, but so far as any choice is 
open, or any question difficult of decision, the direction 
of all toil. That chivalry, to the abuse and dishonour 
of which are attributable primarily whatever is cruel in 
war, unjust in peace, or corrupt and ignoble in domestic 
relations ; and to the original purity and power of which 
we owe the defence alike of faith, of law, and of love ; — 
that chivalry, I say, in its very first conception of hon- 
ourable life, assumes the subjection of the young knight 
to the command— should it even be the command in 
caprice — of his lady. It assumes this, because its mas- 
ters knew that the first and necessary impulse of every 
truly taught and knightly heart is this of blind service 
to its lady ; that where that true faith and captivity are 
not, all wayward and wicked passions must be ; and 
that in this rapturous obedience to the single love of 
his youth, is the sanctification of all man's strength, and 
the continuance of all his purposes. And this, not be- 
cause such obedience would be safe, or honourable, 
were it ever rendered to the unworthy ; but because it 
ought to be impossible for every noble youth — it is 



OF queens' gakdens. 97 

impossible for every one rightly trained — to love any one 
whose gentle counsel he cannot trust, or whose prayer- 
ful command he can hesitate to obey. 

I do not insist by any farther argument on this, for I 
think it should commend itself at once to your knowl- 
edge of what has been and to your feelings of what 
should be. You cannot think that the buckling on of 
the knight's armour by his lady's hand was a mere ca- 
price of romantic fashion. It is the type of an eternal 
truth — that the soul's armour is never well set to the 
heart unless a woman's hand has braced it; and it is 
only when she braces it loosely that the honour of man- 
hood fails. Know you not those lovely lines — I would 
they were learned by all youthful ladies of England : — 

" Ah, wasteful woman ! — she who may 
On her sweet self set her own price. 
Knowing he cannot choose but pay — 
How has she cheapen'd Paradise ! 
How given for nought her priceless gift, 
HoYv^ spoiled the bread and spill'd the wine, 
"Which, spent with due, respective thrift, 
Had made brutes men, and men divine ! " * 

This much, then, respecting the relations of lovers I 
* Coventiy Patmore. 



98 SESAME AND LILIES. 

believe you will accept. But what we too often doubt 
is the fitness of the continuance of such a relation 
throughout the whole of human life. We think it right 
in the lover and mistress, not in the husband and wife. 
That is to say, we think that a reverent and tender duty 
is due to one whose affection we still doubt, and whose 
character we as yet do but partially and distantly dis- 
cern ; and that this reverence and duty are to be with- 
drawn when the affection has become wholly and limit- 
lessly our own, and the character has been so sifted and 
tried that we fear not to entrust it with the happiness 
of our lives. Do you not see how ignoble this is, as 
well as how unreasonable ? Do you not feel that mar- 
riage — when it is marriage at all, — is only the seal which 
marks the vowed transition of temporary into untiring 
service, and of fitful into eternal love ? 

But how, you will ask, is the idea of this guiding 
function of the woman reconcileable with a true wifely 
subjection? Simply in that it is a guiding, not a deter- 
mining, function. Let me try to show you briefly how 
these powers seem to be rightly distinguishable. 

"We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in speak- 
ing of the " superiority" of one sex to the other, as if 
they could be compared in similar things. Each has 



OF queens' gabdens. 99 

what the other has not ; each completes the other, and 
is completed by the other : they are in nothing alike, 
and the happiness and perfection of both depends on 
each asking and receiving from the other what the other 
only can give. 

Now their separate characters are briefly these. The 
man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He is 
eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the de- 
fender. His intellect is for speculation and invention ; 
his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest, 
wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But 
the woman's power is for rule, not for battle, — and her 
intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet 
ordering, arrangement and decision. She sees the qual- 
ities of things, their claims and their places. Her great 
function is Praise : she enters into no contest, but in- 
fallibly judges the crown of contest. By her office, and 
place, she is protected from all danger and temptation. ^ 
, The man, in his rough work in open world, must en- 
counter all peril and trial :— to him, therefore, the fail- 
/ ure, the offence, the inevitable error : often he must be 
[ wounded, or subdued, often misled, and always hardened. 
But he guards the woman from all this ; within his 
house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought 



100 SESAME AND LILIES. 

it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of 
error or offence. This is the true nature of home — it 
is the place of Peace ; the shelter, not only from all in- 
jury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far 
as it is not this, it is not home : so far as the anxieties 
of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently- 
minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the 
outer world is allowed by either husband or wife to 
cross the thi^eshold, it ceases to be home ; it is then 
only a part of that outer world which you have roofed 
over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred 
place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched 
over by Household Gods, before whose faces none may 
come but those whom they can receive with love, — so 
far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a no- 
bler shade and light, — shade as of the rock in a weary 
land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea ; — 
so far it vindicates the name, and fulfils the praise, of 
home. 

And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always 
round her. The stars only may be over her head ; the 
glow-worm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire 
at her foot : but home is yet wherever she is ; and for 
a noble woman it stretches far round her, better than 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 101 

ceiled with cedar, or painted with yermilion, shedding 
its quiet light far, for those who else were homeless. 

This, then, I believe to be, — will you not admit it to 
bo, — the woman's true place and power ? But do not 
you see that to fulfil this, she must — as far as one can 
use such terms of a human creature — be incapable of 
error ? So far as she rules, all must be right, or nothing 
is. She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good; in- 
stinctively, infallibly wise — wise, not for self-develop- 
ment, but for self-renunciation : wise, not that she may 
set herself above her husband, but that she may never 
fail from his side : wise, not with the narrowness of 
insolent and loveless pride, but with the passionate 
gentleness of an infinitely variable, because infinitely 
applicable, modesty of service — the true changefulness 
of woman. In that ^eat sense — " La donna e mobile," 
not " Qual pium' al vento ; " no, nor yet "Variable as the 
shade, by the light quivering aspen made ; " but variable 
as the light, manifold in fair and serene division, that it 
may take the color of all that it falls upon, and exalt it. 

II. I have been trying, thus far, to show you what 
should be the place, and what the power of woman. 
Now, secondly, we ask. What kind of education is to fit 
her for these ? 



102 SESAME AND LILIES. 

And if you indeed think this a true conception of her 
office and dignity, it will not be difficult to trace the 
course of education which would fit her for the one, and 
raise her to the other. 

The first of our duties to her — no thoughtful persons 
now doubt this, — is to secure for her such physical 
training and exercise as may confirm her health, and 
perfect her beauty, the highest refinement of that beauty 
being unattainable without splendor of activity and of 
delicate strength. To perfect her beauty, I say, and 
increase its power ; it cannot be too powerful, nor shed 
its sacred light too far : only remember that all physical 
freedom is vain to produce beauty without a correspond- 
ing freedom of heart. There are two passages of that 
poet who is distinguished, it seems to me, from all 
others — not by power, but by exquisite rigJitnes^ — which 
point you to the source, and describe to you, in a few 
syllables, the completion of womanly beauty. I will 
read the introductory stanzas, but the last is the one I 
wish you specially to notice : 

" Three years she grew in sun and shower, 
Then Nature said, a lovelier flower 
On earth was never sown. 



OF queens' gaedens. 103 

This cliilcl I to myself will take ; 
She shall be mine, and I will make 
A lady of my own. 

' Myself will to my darling be 
Both law and impulse ; and with me 

The girl, in rock and plain. 
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower. 
Shall feel an overseeing power 

To kindle, or restrain. 

'^ The floating clouds their state shall lend 
To her, for her the willow bend ; 

Nor shall she fail to see 
Even in the motions of the storm, 
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 

By silent sympathy. 

*^ And vital feelings of delight 
Shall rear her form to stately height, — 

Her virgin bosom swell. 
Such tliouglits to Lucy I Avill give, 
"While she and I together live. 

Here in this hapj)y dell." 

" Vital feelings of delight," observe. There are deadly, 
feelings of delight ; but the natural ones are vital, 
necessary to very life. 



104 SESAME AND LILIES. 

And they must be feelings of delight, if they are to 
be vital. . Do not think yon can make a girl lovely, if 
you do not make her happy, j There is not one restraint 
you put on a good girl's nature — there is not one check 
you give to her instincts of affection or of effort — which 
will not be indelibly written on her features, with a 
hardness which is all the more painful because it takes 
away the brightness from the eyes of innocence, and the 
charm from the brow of virtue. 

This for the means : now note the end. Take from 
the same poet, in two lines, a perfect description of 
womanly beauty — 

" A countenance in which did meet 
Sweet records, promises as sweet." 

The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance can 
only consist in that majestic peace, which is founded in 
the memory of happy and useful years, — full of sweet 
records ; and from the joining of this with that yet more 
majestic childishness, which is still full of change and 
promise ; — opening always — modest at once, and bright, 
with hope of better things to be won, and to be be- 
stowed. There is no old age where there is still that 
promise — it is eternal youth. 



OF queens' gabdens. 105 

Thus, then, you have first to mould her physical 
frame, and then, as the strength she gains will permit 
you, to fill and temper her mind with all knowledge and 
thoughts which tend to confirm its natural instincts of 
justice, and refine its natural tact of love. 

All such knowledge should be given her as may ena- 
ble her to understand, and even to aid, the work of men : 
and yet it should be given, not as knowledge, — not as if it 
were, or could be, for her an object to know ; but only 
to feel, and to judge. It is of no moment, as a matter 
of pride or perfectness in herself, whether she knows 
many languages or one ; but it is of the utmost, that she 
should be able to show kindness to a stranger, and to 
understand the sweetness of a stranger's tongue. It is 
of no moment to her own worth or dignity that she 
should be acquainted with this science or that ; but it 
is of the highest that she should be trained in habits of 
accurate thought ; that she should understand the mean- 
ing, the inevitableness, and the loveliness of natural laws, 
and follow at least some one path of scientific attainment, 
as far as to the threshold of that bitter Yalley of Hu- 
miliation, into which only the wisest and bravest of men 
can descend, owning themselves forever children, gath- 
ering pebbles on a boundless shore. It is of little 
5* 



106 SESAME AND LILIES. 

consequence how many positions of cities she knows, or 
how many dates of events, or how many names of cele- 
brated persons — it is not the object of education to turn 
a woman into a dictionary ; but it is deeply necessary 
that she should be taught to enter with her whole 
personality into the history she reads ; to picture the 
passages of it vitally in her own bright imagination ; to 
apprehend, with her fine instincts, the pathetic circum- 
stances and dramatic relations, which the historian too 
often only eclipses by his reasoning^ and disconnects by 
his arrangement : it is for her to trace the hidden equi- 
ties of divine reward, and catch sight, through the 
darkness, of the fateful threads of woven fire that con- 
nect error with its retribution. But, chiefly of all, she 
is to be taught to extend the limits of her sympathy 
with respect to that history which is being for her de- 
termined, as the moments pass in which she draws her 
peaceful breath : and to the contemporary calamity 
which, were it but rightly mourned by her, would recur 
no more hereafter. She is to exercise herself in imagin- 
ing what would be the effects upon her mind and con- 
duct, if she were daily brought into the presence of the 
suffering which is not the less real because shut from 
her sight. She is to be taught somewhat to understand 



OF queens' gardens. 107 

the nothingness of the proportion which that little world 
in which she lives and loves, bears to the world in which 
God lives and loves ; — and solemnly she is to be taught 
to strive that her thoughts of piety may not be feeble in 
proportion to the number they embrace, nor her prayer 
more languid than it is for the momentary relief from 
pain of her husband or her child, when it is uttered for 
the multitudes of those who have none to love them, — 
and is, " for all who are desolate and oppressed." 

Thus far, I think, I have had your concurrence ; per- 
haps you will not be with me in what I believe is most 
needful for me to say. There is one dangerous science 
for women — one which let them indeed beware how they 
profanely touch — that of theology. Strange, and miser- 
ably strange, that while they are modest enough to 
doubt their powers, and pause at the threshold of 
sciences where every step is demonstrable and sure, they 
will plunge headlong, and without one thought of in- 
competency, into that science in which the greatest men 
have trembled, and the wisest erred. Strange, that they 
will complacently and pridefully bind up whatever vice 
or folly there is in them, vv^hatever arrogance, petulance, 
or blind incomprehensiveness, into one bitter bundle of 

consecrated myrrh. | Strange, in creatures born to be 

-1 



108 SESAME AND LILIES. 

Love visible, that where tliey can know least, they will 
condemn first, and think to recommend themselves to 
their Master by scrambling up the steps of His judgment 
tlirone, to divide it vfith Him. | Most strange, that they 
should think they were led by the Spirit of the Com- 
forter into habits of mind which have become in them 
the unmixed elements of home discomfort; and that 
they dare to turn the Household Gods of Christian- 
ity into ugly idols of their own — spiritual dolls, for 
them to dress according to their caprice ; and from 
which their husbands must turn away in grieved con- 
tempt, lest they should be shrieked at for breaking 
them. 

I believe, then, with this exception, that a girl's educa- 
tion should be nearly, in its course and material of study, 
the same as a boy's ; but quite differently directed. A 
woman, in any rank of life, ought to know whatever her 
husband is likely to know, but to know it in a different 
way. His command of it should be foundational and 
progressive, hers, general and accomplished for daily 
and helpful use. Not but that it would often be wiser 
in men to learn things in a womanly sort of way, for 
present use, and to seek for the discipline and training 
of their mental powers in such branches of study as will 



OF queens' gakdens. 109 

be afterwards fittest for social service ; but, speaking 
broadly, a man ought to know any language or science 
he learns, thoroughly, while a woman ought to know 
the same language, or science, only so far as may enable 
her to sympathise in her husband's pleasures, and in 
those of his best friends. 

Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as far as she 
reaches. There is a wide difference between element- 
ary knowledge and superficial knowledge — between a 
firm beginning, and a feeble smattering. A woman may 
always help her husband by what she knows, however 
little ; by what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she will 
only teaze him. 

And, indeed, if there were to be any difference be- 
tween a girl's education and a boy's, I should say that 
of the two the girl should be earlier led, as her intellect 
ripens faster, into deep and serious subjects ; and that 
her range of literature should be, not more, but less 
frivolous, calculated to add the qualities of patience and 
seriousness to her natural poignancy of thought and 
quickness of wit ; and also to keep her in a lofty and 
pure element of thought. I enter not now into any 
question of choice of books ; only be sure that her 
books are not heaped up in her lap as they fall out of 



110 SESAME AND LILIES. 

the package of the circulating library, wet with the last 
and lightest spray of the fountain of folly. 

Or even of the fountain of wit ; for with respect to 
that sore temptation of novel-reading, it is not the bad- 
ness of a novel that we should dread, but its over- 
wrought interest. The weakest romance is not so stupi- 
fying as the lower forms of religious exciting literature, 
and the worst romance is not so corrupting as false 
history, false philosophy, or false political essays. But 
the best romance becomes dangerous, if, by its excite- 
ment, it renders the ordinary course of life uninteresting, 
and increases the morbid thirst for useless acquaintance 
with scenes in which we shall never be called upon to 
act. 

I speak therefore of good novels only ; and our mod- 
em literature is particularly rich in types of such. Well 
read, indeed, these books have serious use, being nothing 
less than treatises on moral anatomy and chemistry ; 
studies of human nature in the elements of it. But I 
attach little weight to this function : they are hardly 
ever read with earnestness enough to permit them to 
fulfil it. The utmost they usually do is to enlarge 
somewhat the charity of a kind reader, or the bitterness 
of a malicious one ; for each will gather, from the novel. 



OF queens' gaedens. Ill 

food for her own disposition. Those who are naturally 
proud and envious will learn from Thackeray to despise 
humanity ; those who are naturally gentle, to pity it ; 
those who are naturally shallow, to laugh at it. So, 
also, there might be a serviceable pov^er in novels to 
bring before us, in vividness, a human truth which we 
had before dimly conceived ; but the temptation to pic- 
turesqueness of statement is so great, that often the 
best writers of fiction cannot resist it ; and our views 
are rendered so violent and one-sided, that their vitality 
is rather a harm than good. 

Without, however, venturing here on any attempt at 
decision how much novel-reading should be allowed, let 
me at least clearly assert this, that whether novels, or 
poetry, or history be read, they should be chosen, not 
for what is out of them, but for what is in them. The 
chance and scattered evil that may here and there haunt, 
or hide itself in, a powerful book, never does any harm 
to a noble girl ; but the emptiness of an author oppresses 
her, and his amiable folly degrades her. And if she 
can have access to a good library of old and classical 
books, there need be no choosing at all. Keep the 
modern magazine and novel out of your girl's way : turn 
her loose into the old library every wet day, and let her 



112 SESAME AND LILIES. 

alone. Slie will find what is good for her ; you cannot : 
for there is just this difference between the making of 
a girl's character and a boy's — ^you may chisel a boy 
into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, 
if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. 
But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She 
grows as a flower does, — she will wither without sun ; 
she will decay in her sheath, as the narcissus does, if 
you do not give her air enough ; she may fall, and defile 
her head in dust, if you leave her without help at some 
moments of her life ; but you cannot fetter her ; she 
must take her own fair form and way, if she take any, 
and in mind as in body, must have always 

" Her household motions light and free 
And steps of virgin liberty." 

Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in 
a field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times better 
than you; and the good ones too, and will eat some 
bitter and prickly ones, good for it, which you had not 
the slightest thought were good. 

Then, in art, keep the finest models before her, and 
let her practice in all accomplishments be accurate and 
thorough, so as to enable her to understand more than 



OF queens' gardens. 113 

slie accomplishes. I say the finest models — that is 
to saVy the truest, simplest, usefuUest. Note those epi- 
thets ; they will range through all the arts. Try them 
in music, where you might think them the least applic- 
able. I say the truest, that in which the notes most 
closely and faithfully express the meaning of the words, 
or the character of intended emotion ; again, the sim- 
plest, that in which the meaning and melody are attained 
with the fewest and most significant notes possible ; and, 
finally, the usefuUest, that music which makes the best 
words most beautiful, which enchants them in our mem- 
ories each with its own glory of sound, and which ap- 
plies them closest to the heart at the moment we need 
them. 

And not only in the material and in the course, but 
yet more earnestly in the spirit of it, let a girl's educa- 
tion be as serious as a boy's. You bring up your girls 
as if they were meant for sideboard ornament, and then 
complain of their frivolity. Give them the same advan- 
tages that you give their brothers — appeal to the same 
grand instincts of virtue in them ; teach them also that 
courage and truth are the pillars of their being : do you 
think that they would not answer that appeal, brave and 
true as they are even now, when you know that there is 



114 • SESAME AND LILIES. 

hardly a girl's school in this Christian kingdom where 
the children's courage or sincerity would be thought of 
half so much importance as their way of coming in at a 
door ; and when the whole system of society, as respects 
the mode of establishing them in life, is one rotten 
plague of cowardice and imposture — cowardice, in not 
daring to let them live, or love, except as their neigh- 
bours choose ; and imposture, in bringing, for the pur- 
j)ose of our own pride, the full glow of the world's worst 
vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very period when the 
whole happiness of her future existence depends upon 
her remaining undazzled ? 

And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings, but 
noble teachers. You consider somewhat, before you 
send your boy to school, what kind of a man the master 
is ; — whatsoever kind of a man he is, you at least give him 
full authority over your son, and show some respect for 
him yourself ; if he comes to dine with you, you do not 
put him at a side table ; you know also that, at his col- 
lege, your child's immediate tutor will be under the 
direction of some still higher tutor, for whom you have 
absolute reverence. You do not treat the Dean of Christ 
Church or the Master of Trinity as your inferiors. 

But what teachers do you give your girls, and what 



OF queens' gardens. 115 

reverence do you show to the teachers you have chosen ? 
Is a girl likely to think her own conduct, or her own 
intellect, of much importance, when you trust the entire 
formation of her character, moral and intellectual, to a 
person whom you let your servants treat with less re- 
spect than they do your housekeeper (as if the soul of 
your child were a less charge than jams and groceries), 
and whom you yourself think you confer an honour upon 
by letting her sometimes sit in the drawing-room in the 
evening ? 

Thus, then, of literature as her help, and thus of art. 
There is one more help which we cannot do without — 
one which, alone, has sometimes done more than all 
other influences besides, — the help of wild and fair na- 
ture. Hear this of the education of Joan of Arc : 

'^ The education of this poor girl was mean according to 
the present standard; was ineffably grand, according to a 
purer i)liilosophic standard ; and only not good for our age, 
because for us it would be unattainable. * * * 

^^I^ext after her spiritual advantages, she owed most to 
the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy 
was on the byink of a boundless forest ; and it was haunted 
to that degree by fairies, that the parish priest {cure) was 
obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep them 
in any decent bounds. * * * 



116 SESAME AlW LILIES. 

" But tlie forests of Domremy — tliose were tlie glories of the 
land, for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient se- 
crets that towered into tragic strength. ^ Abbeys there were, 
and abbey windows,' — ^ like Moorish temples of the Hindoos/ 
that exercised even princely power both in Touraine and in 
the German Diets. These had their sweet bells that pierced 
the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each 
its own dreamy legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, 
were these abbeys, so as in no degree to disturb the deep 
solitude of the region ; yet many enough to spread a network 
or awning of Christian sanctity over what else might have 
seemed a heathen wilderness." * 

Now, you cannot, indeed, have here in England, woods 
eighteen miles deep to the centre ; but you can, perhaps, 
keep a fairy or two for your children yet, if you wish to 
keep them. But do you wish it ? Suppose you had 
each, at the back of your houses, a garden large enough 
for your children to play in, with just as much lawn as 
would give them room to run,— no more — and that you 
could not change your abode ; but that, if you chose, 
you could double your income, or quadruple it, by dig- 
ging a coal shaft in the middle of the lawn, and turning 
the flower-beds into heaps of coke. "Would you do it ? 

* "Joan of Arc: in reference to M. Michelet's History of France." 
De Quincey's Works. Vol. ill. p. 317. 



OF queens' gardens. 117 

I think not. I can tell you, you would be wrong if you 
did, though it gave you income sixty-fold instead of 
four-fold. 

Yet this is what you are doing with all England. The 
whole country is but a little garden, not more than 
enough for your children to run on the lawns of, if you 
would let them aU run there. And this little garden 
you will turn into furnace-ground, and fill with heaps of 
cinders, if you can ; and those children of yours, not 
you, will suffer for it. For the fairies will not be all ban- 
ished ; there are fairies of the furnace as of the wood, 
and their first gifts seem to be " sharp arrows of the 
mighty ; " but their last gifts are " coals of juniper." 

And yet I cannot — though there is no part of my sub- 
ject that I feel more— press this upon you ; for we made 
so little use of the power of nature while we had it that 
we shall hardly feel what we have lost. Just on the 
other side of the Mersey you have your Snowdon, and 
your Menai Straits, and that mighty granite rock be- 
yond the moors of Anglesea, splendid in its heatherly 
crest, and foot planted in the deep sea, once thought of 
as sacred — a divine promontory, looking westward ; the 
Holy Head or Headland, still not without av^e when its 
re^d light glares first through storm. These are the hills, 



118 SESAME AND LTLIES. 

and these the bays and blue inlets, wbich, among the 
Greeks, would have been always loved, always fateful in 
influence on the national mind. That Snowdon is your 
Parnassus ; but where are its Muses ? That Holyhead 
mountain is your Island of ^gina, but where is its 
Temple to Minerva ? 

Shall I read you what the Christian Minerva had 
achieved under the shadow of our Parnassus, up to the 
year 1848 ? — Here is a little account of a Welsh school, 
from page 261 of the report on Wales, published by the 
Committee of Council on Education. This is ar school 
close to a town containing 5,000 persons : — 

" I then called up a larger class, most of whom had re- 
cently come to the school. Three girls repeatedly declared 
they had never lieard of Christ, and two that they had never 
heard of God. Two out of six thought Christ was on earth 
now (^they might have had a worse thought, i^erhaps') ; 
three knew nothing about the crucifixion. Four out of 
seven did not know the names of the months, nor the 
number of days in a year. They had no notion of addition 
beyond two and two, or three and three ; their minds were 
perfect blanks." 

Oh, ye women of England ! from the Princess of that 
Wales to the simplest of you, do not think your own 



OF queens' gardens. 119 

children can be brought into their true fold of rest 
while these are scattered on the hills, as sheep having 
no shepherd. And do not think your daughters can be 
trained to the truth of their own human beauty, while 
the pleasant places, which God made at once for their 
school-room and their play-ground, lie desolate and 
defiled. You cannot baptize them rightly in those inch- 
deep fonts of yours, unless you baptize them also in the 
sweet waters which the great Lawgiver strikes forth 
for ever from the rocks of your native land — waters 
which a Pagan would have worshipped in their purity, 
and you only worship with pollution. You cannot lead 
your children faithfully to those narrow axe-hewn church 
altars of yours, while the dark azure altars in heaven — 
the mountains that sustain your island throne, — moun- 
tains on which a Pagan would have seen the powers of 
heaven rest in every wreathed cloud — remain for you 
without inscription ; altars built, not to, but by, an Un- 
known God. 

III. Thus far, then, of the nature, thus far of the 
teaching, of woman, and thus of her household office, 
and queenliness. We come now to our last, our widest 
question, — What is her queenly office with respect to 
the state ? 



120 SESAME AND LLIIES. 

Generally we are under an impression that a man's 
duties are public, and a woman's private. But this is 
not altogether so. A man has a personal work or duty, 
relating to his own home, and a public work or duty, 
which is the expansion of the other, relating to the state. 
So a woman has a personal work and duty, relating to 
her own home, and a public work and duty, which is also 
the expansion of that. 

Now the man's work for his own home is, as has been 
said, to secure its maintenance, progress, and defence ; 
the woman's to secure its order, comfort, and loveliness. 

Expand both these functions. The man's duty, as a 
member of a commonwealth, is to assist in the mainte- 
nance, in the advance, in the defence of the state. The 
woman's duty, as a member of the commonwealth, is to 
assist in the ordering, in the comforting, and in the 
beautiful adornment of the state. 

What the man is at his own gate, defending it, if need 
be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but 
in a more devoted measure, he is to be at the gate of 
his country, leaving his home, if need be, even to the 
spoiler, to do his more incumbent work there. 

And, in like manner, v/hat the woman is to be within 
her gates, as the centre of order, the balm of distress. 



OF queens' gaedens. 121 

and tlie mirror of beauty ; tliat slie is also to be without 
her gates, where order is more difficult, distress more 
imminent, loveliness more rare. 

And as within the human heart there is always set an 
instinct for all its real duties, — an instinct which you 
cannot quench, but only warp and corrupt if you with- 
draw it from its true purpose ; — as there is the intense 
instinct of love, which, rightly disciplined, maintains all 
the sanctities of life and, misdirected, undermines them ; 
and miLst do either the one or the other ; so there is in 
the human heart an inextinguishable instinct^ the love of 
power, which, rightly directed, maintains all the majesty 
of law and life, and misdirected, wrecks them. 

Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart of 
man, and of the heart of woman, God set it there, and 
God keeps it there. Vainly, as falsely, you blame or 
rebuke the desire of power ! — For Heaven's sake, and 
for Man's sake, desire it all you can. But what power ? 
That is all the question. Power to destroy? the lion's 
limb, and the dragon's breath? Not so. Power to 
heal, to redeem, to guide and to guard. Power of the 
sceptre and shield ; the power of the royal hand that 
heals in touching, — that binds the fiend and looses the 
captive ; the throne that is founded on the rock of Jus- 



122 SESAME AND LILIES. 

tice, and descended from only by steps of mercy. Will 
you not covet such power as this, and seek such throne 
as this, and be no more housewives, but queens ? 

It is now long since the women of England arrogated, 
universally, a title v/hich once belonged to nobility only, 
and, having once been in the habit of accepting the 
simple title of gentlewoman, as correspondent to that 
of gentleman, insisted on the privilege of assuming the 
title of " Lady,"^' which properly corresponds only to 
the title of "Lord." 

I do not blame them for this ; but only for their nar- 
row motive in this. I would have them desire and 
claim the title of Lady, provided they claim, not merely 
the title, but the office and duty signified by it. Lady 
means "bread-giver" or "loaf-giver," and Lord means 
"maintainer of laws," and both titles have reference, 
not to the law which is maintained in the house, nor to 
the bread which is given to the household ; but to law 

* I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our English 
youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and girl should receive, at a 
given age, their knighthood and ladyhood by true title ; attainable only 
by certain probation and trial both of character and accomplishment ; 
and to be forfeited, on conviction, by their peers, of any dishonorable 
act. Such an institution would be entirely, and with all noble results, 
possible, in a nation which loved honour. That it would not be possible 
among us is not to the discredit of the scheme. 



OF queens' gabdens. 123 

maintained for the multitude, and to bread broken 
among the multitude. So that a Lord has legal claim 
only to his title in so far as he is the maintainor of the 
justice of the Lord of Lords; and a Lady has legal 
claim to her title, only so far as she communicates that 
helj) to the poor representatives of her Master, which 
women once, ministering to Him of their substance, 
were permitted to extend to that Master Himself ; and 
when she is known, as He Himself once was, in breaking 
of bread. 

And this beneficent and legal dominion, this power 
of the Dominus, or House Lord, and of the Domina, or 
House-Lady, is great and venerable, not in the numbei* 
of those through whom it has lineally descended, but in 
the number of those whom it grasps within its sway ; 
it is always regarded with reverent worship wherever 
its dynasty is founded on its duty, and its ambition co- 
relative with its beneficence. Your fancy is pleased 
with the thought of being noble ladies, with a train of 
vassals. Be it so : you cannot be too noble, and your 
train cannot be too great ; but see to it that your train 
is of vassals whom you serve and feed, not merely of 
slaves who serve and feed you ; and that the multitude 
which obeys you is of those whom you have comforted, 



124 SESAME AKD LILIES. 

not oppressed, — whom you liave redeemed, not led into 
captivity. 

And this, wliich is true of the lower or household 
dominion, is equally true of the queenly dominion ; — 
that highest dignity is open to you, if you will also ac- 
cept that highest duty. Rex et Regina — Roi et Reine 
—'' BigJit'doers;'' they differ but from the Lady and 
Lord, in that their power is supreme over the mind as 
over the person — that they not only feed and clothe, 
but direct and teach. And whether consciously or not, 
you must be, in many a heart, enthroned : there is no 
putting by that crown ; queens you must always be ; 
queens to your lovers ; queens to your husbands and 
your sons ; queens of higher mystery to the world be- 
yond, which bows itself, and will for ever bow, before 
the myrtle crown, and the stainless sceptre, of woman- 
hood. But, alas ! you are too often idle and careless 
queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while 
you abdicate it in the greatest ; and leaving misrule and 
violence to work their will among men, in defiance of 
the power, which, holding straight in gift from the 
Prince of all Peace, the wicked among you betray, and 
the good forget. 

"Prince of Peace." Note that name. When kings 



OF queens' gardens. 125 

rule in that name, and nobles, and the judges of the 
earth, they also, in their narrow place, and mortal meas- 
ure, receive the power of it. There are no other rulers 
than they : other rule than theirs is but misrvile ; they 
who govern verily "Dei gratia" are all princes, yes, or 
princesses, of peace. There is not a war in the world, 
no, nor an injustice, but you women are answerable for 
it ; not in that you have provoked, but in that you have 
not hindered. Men, by their nature, are prone to fight ; 
they will fight for any cause, or for none. It is for you 
to choose their cause for them, and to forbid them when 
there is no cause. There is no suffering, no injustice, 
no misery in the earth, but the guilt of it lies lastly 
with you. Men can bear the sight of it, but you should 
not be able to bear it. Men may tread it down without 
sympathy in their own struggle ; but men are feeble in 
sympathy, and contracted in hope ; it is you only who 
can feel the depths of pain ; and conceive the way of its 
healing. Instead of trying to do this, you turn away 
from it ; you shut yourselves within your park walls 
and garden gates ; and you are content to know that 
there is beyond them a whole world in wilderness — a 
world of secrets which you dare not penetrate ; and of 
suffering which you dare not conceive. 



126 RESAME AND LILIES. 

I tell you that this is to me quite the most amazing 
among the phenomena of humanity. I am surprised at 
no depths to which, when once warped from its honour, 
that humanity can be degraded. I do not wonder at 
the miser's death, with his hands, as they relax, drop- 
ping gold. I do not wonder at the sensualist's life, with 
the shroud wrapped about his feet. I do not wonder at 
the single-handed murder of a single victim, done by 
the assassin in the darkness of the railway, or reed- 
shadow of the marsh. I do not even wonder at the 
myriad-handed murder of multitudes, done boastfully 
in the daylight, by the frenzy of nations, and the im- 
measurable, unimaginable guilt, heaped up from hell to 
heaven, of their priests, and kings. But this is won- 
derful to me — oh, how wonderful ! — to see the tender 
and delicate woman among you, with her child at her 
breast, and a power, it she would wield it, over it, and 
over its father, purer than the air of heaven, and stronger 
than the seas of earth — nay, a magnitude of blessing 
which her husband would not part with for all that 
earth itself, though it were made of one entire and per- 
fect chrysolite : — to see her abdicate this majesty to 
play at precedence with her next-door neighbor ! This 
is wonderful — oh, wonderful ! — to see her, with every 



OF queens' gardens. 127 

innocent feeling fresh within her, go out in the morning 
into her garden to play with the fringes of its guarded 
flowers, and lift their heads when they are drooping, 
with her happy smile upon her face, and no cloud upon 
her brow, because there is a little wall around her place 
of peace : and yet she knows, in her heart, if she would 
only look for its knowledge, that, outside of that little 
rose-covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is torn 
Tip by the agony of men, and beat level by the drift of 
their life-blood. 

Have you ever considered what a deep under mean- 
ing there lies, or at least may be read, if we choose, in 
our custom of strewing flowers before those whom we 
think most happy ? Do you suppose it is merely to 
deceive them into the hope that happiness is always to 
fall thus in showers at their feet ? — that wherever they 
pass they will tread on herbs of sweet scent, and that 
the rough ground will be made smooth for them by 
depth of roses ? So surely as they believe that, they 
will have, instead, to walk on bitter herbs and thorns ; 
and the only softness to their feet will be of snow. But 
it is not thus intended they should believe ; there is a 
better meaning in that old custom. The path of a good 
woman is indeed strewn with flowers : but they rise be- 



128 SESAME AND LILIES. 

« 

hind her steps, not before them. " Her feet have touched 
the meadows, and left the daisies rosy." You think 
that only a lover's fancy ; — false and vain ! How if it 
could be true ? You think this also, perhaps, only a 
poet's fancy — 

'^ Even the light harebell raised its head 
Elastic from her airy tread." 

But it is little to say of a woman, that she only does not 
destroy where she passes. She should revive ; the hare- 
bells should bloom, not stoop, as she passes. You think 
I am going into wild hyperbole ? Pardon me, not a 
whit— I mean what I say in calm English, spoken in 
resolute truth. You have heard it said — (and I believe 
there is more than fancy even in that saying, but let it 
pass for a fanciful one) — that flowers only flourish 
rightly in the garden of some one who loves them. I 
know you would like that to be true ; you would think 
it a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers into 
brighter bloom by a kind look upon them : nay, more, 
if your look had the power, not only to cheer, but to 
guard them — if you could bid the black blight turn 
away, and the knotted caterpillar spare — if you could 



OF queens' gaedens. 129 

bid the dew fall upon them in the drought, and say to 
the south wind, in frost — " Come, thou south, and 
breathe upon my garden, that the spices of it may flow 
out." This you would think a great thing ? And do 
you think it not a greater thing, that all this (and how 
much more than this !) you can do, for fairer flowers 
than these — flowers that could bless you for having 
blessed them, and will love you for having loved 
them ; — flowers that have eyes like yours, and thoughts 
like yours, and lives like yours ; which, once saved, you 
save for ever ? Is this only a little ]30wer ? Far among 
the moorlands and the rocks, — far in the darkness of 
the terrible streets, — these feeble florets are lying, with 
all their fresh leaves torn, and their stems broken — will 
you never go down to them, nor set them in order in 
their little fragrant beds, nor fence them in their shud- 
dering from the fierce wind? Shall morning follow 
morning, for you, but not for them ; and the dawn rise 
to v/atch, far away, those frantic Dances of Death f' but 
no dawn rise to breathe upon these living banks of wild 
violet, and woodbine, and rose ; nor call to you, through 
your casement, — call, (not giving you the name of the 
English poet's lady, but the name of Dante's great Ma- 
* See note, p. 57. 



130 SESAME AND LILIES. 

tilda, who on the edge of happy Lethe, stood, wreathing 
flowers with flowers,) saying : — 

'^ Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown. 
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad 
And the musk of the roses blown ? " 

"Will you not go down among them ? — among those 
sweet living things, whose new courage, sprung from the 
earth with the deep colour of heaven upon it, is start- 
ing up in strength of goodly spire ; and whose purity, 
washed from the dust, is opening, bud by bud, into the 
flower of promise ; — and still they turn to you, and for 
you, " The Larkspur listens — I hear, I hear ! And the 
Lily whispers — I wait." 

Did you notice that I missed two lines when I read 
you that first stanza ; and think that I had forgotten 
them ? Hear them now : — 

" Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown ; 
Come into the garden, Maud, 
I am here at the gate, alone." 

Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this 
sweeter garden, alone, waiting for you ? Did you ever 



OF queens' gakdens. 131 

hear, not of a Maude, but a Madeleine, who went down 
to her garden in the dawn, and found one waiting at the 
gate, whom she supposed to be the gardener ? Have 
you not sought Him often; — sought Him in vain, all 
through the night; — sought Him in vain at the gate 
of that old garden where the fiery sword is set ? He is 
never there ; but at the gate of this garden He is waiting 
always — waiting to take your hand — ready to go down 
to see the fruits of the valley, to see whether the vine 
has flourished, and the pomegranate budded. There 
you shall see with Him the little tendrils of the vines 
that His hand is guiding — there you shall see the pome- 
granate springing where His hand cast the sanguine 
seed ; — more : you shall see the troops of the angel 
keepers, that, with their wings, wave away the hungry 
birds from the pathsides where He has sown, and call 
to each other between the vineyard rows, " Take us the 
foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines 
have tender grapes." Oh — you queens — you queens ! 
among the hills and happy greenwood of this land of 
yours, shall the foxes have holes, and the birds of the 
air have nests ; and in your cities, shall the stones cry 
out against you, that they are the only pillows Avhere 
the Son of Man can lay His head ? 



LECTUEE III. 

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 

Lecture delivered in the theatre of the Eoyal College of Science, 
Dublin, 1868. 

96. When I accepted the privilege of addressing you 
to-day, I was not aware of a restriction with respect to 
the topics of discussion which may be brought before 
this Society^'" — a restriction which, though entirely 
wise and right under the circumstances contemplated 
in its introduction, would necessarily have disabled me, 
thinking as I think, from preparing any lecture for you 
ou the subject of art in a form which might be perma- 
nently useful. Pardon me, therefore, in so far as I must 
transgress such limitation ; for indeed my infringement 
will be of the letter — not of the spirit — of your com- 
mands. In Y/hatever I may say touching the religion 
which has been the foundation of art, or the policy 
which has contributed to its power, if I offend one, I 
shall offend all ; for I shall take no note of any separa- 
tions in creeds, or antagonisms in parties : neither do I 

^' That no reference should be made to religious questions. 
133 



MYSTEEY OF LIFE AND ITS AETS. 133 

fear that ultimately I shall offend any, by proving — or 
at least stating as capable of positive proof — the con- 
nection of all that is best in the crafts and arts of 
man, with the simplicity of his faith, and the sincerity 
of his patriotism. 

97. But I speak to you under another disadvantage, 
by which I am checked in frankness of utterance, not 
here only, but everywhere ; namely, that I am never 
fully aware how far my audiences are disposed to give 
me credit for real knowledge of my subject, or how far 
they grant me attention only because I have been some- 
times thought an ingenious or pleasant essayist upon it. 
For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call 
the misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily to- 
gether ; not without a foolish vanity in the poor knack 
that I had of doing so ; until I. was heavily punished 
for this j)ride, by finding that many people thought of 
the words only, and cared nothing for their meaning. 
Happily, therefore, the power of using such pleasant 
language — if indeed it ever were mine — is passing away 
from me ; and whatever I am now able to say at all, I 
find myself forced to say with great plainness. For my 
thoughts have changed also, as my words have ; and 
whereas in earlier life, what little influence I obtained 



134 SESAME AND LILIES. 

was due perhaps chiefly to the enthusiasm with which 
I was able to dwell on the beauty of the physical clouds, 
and of their colours in the sky ; so all the influence I now 
desire to retain must be due to the earnestness with 
which I am endeavouring to trace the form and beauty 
of another kind of cloud than those ; the bright cloud, 
of which it is written — 

" What is your life ? It is even as a vapour that ap- 
peareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." 

98. I suppose few people reach the middle or latter 
period of their age, without having, at some moment of 
change or disappointment, felt the truth of those bitter 
words ; and been startled by the fading of the sunshine 
from the cloud of their life, into the sudden agony of 
the knowledge that the fabric of it was as fragile as a 
dream, and the endurance of it as transient as the dew. 
But it is not always that, even at such times of melan- 
choly surprise, we can enter into any true perception 
that this human life shares, in the nature of it, not only 
the evanescence, but the mystery of the cloud ; that its 
avenues are wreathed in darkness, and its forms and 
courses no less fantastic, than spectral and obscure ; so 
that not only in the vanity which we cannot grasp, but 
in the shadow which we cannot pierce, it is true of this 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 135 

cloudy life of ours, that " man walketh in a vain shadow, 
and disquieteth himself in vain." 

99. And least of all, whatever may have been the 
eagerness of our passions, or the height of our pride, 
are we able to understand in its depth the third and 
most solemn character in which our life is like those 
clouds of heaven ; that to it belongs not only their tran- 
sience, not only their mystery, but also their power ; that 
in the cloud of the human soul there is a fire stronger 
than the lightning, and a grace more precious than the 
rain ; and that though of the good and evil it shall one 
day be said alike, that the place that knew them knows 
them no more, there is an infinite separation between 
those whose brief presence had there been a blessing, 
like the mist of Eden that went up from the earth to 
water the garden, and those whose place knew them 
only as a drifting and changeful shade, of whom the 
heavenly sentence is, that they are "wells without 
water ; clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom 
the mist of darkness is reserved for ever ? " 

100. To those among us, however, who have lived 
long enough to form some just estimate of the rate of 
the changes which are, hour by hour in accelerating 
catastrophe, manifesting themselves in the laws, the 



136 SESAME AND LILIES. 

arts, and the creeds of men, it seems to me, that now 
at least, if never at any former time, the thoughts of 
the true nature of our life, and of its powers and respon- 
sibilities, should present themselves with absolute sad- 
ness and sternness. 

And although I know that this feeling is much deep- 
ened in my own mind by disappointment, which, by 
chance, has attended the greater number of my cher- 
ished purposes, I do not for that reason distrust the 
feeling itself, though I am on my guard against an ex- 
aggerated degree of it : nay, I rather believe that in 
periods of new effort and violent change, disappointment 
is a wholesome medicine ; and that in the secret of it, 
as in the twilight so beloved by Titian, we may see the 
colours of things with deeper truth than in the most daz- 
zling sunshine. And because these truths about the 
works of men, which I want to bring to-day before you, 
are most of them sad ones, though at the same time 
helpful ; and because also I believe that your kind Irish 
hearts wall answer more gladly to the truthful expres- 
sion of a personal feeling, than to the exposition of an 
abstract principle, I will permit myself so much unre- 
served speaking of my own causes of regret, as may 
enable you to make just allowance for what, according 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 137 

to your sympathies, you will call either the bitterness, 
or the insight, of a mind which has surrendered its best 
hopes, and been foiled in its favourite aims. 

101. I spent the ten strongest years of my life, (from 
twenty to thirty,) in endeavouring to show the excellence 
of the work of the man whom I believed, and rightly 
believed, to be the greatest painter of the schools of 
England since Eeynolds. I had then perfect faith in 
the power of every great truth or beauty to prevail ulti- 
mately, and take its right place in usefulness and honour ; 
and I strove to bring the painter's work into this due 
place, while the painter was yet alive. But he knew, 
better than I, the uselessness of talking about what 
people could not see for themselves. He always dis- 
couraged me scornfully, even when he thanked me — and 
he died before even the superficial effect of my work 
was visible. I went on, however, thinking I could at 
least be of use to the public, if not to him, in proving 
his power. My books got talked about a little. The 
prices of modern pictures, generally, rose, and I was 
beginning to take some pleasure in a sense of gradual 
victory, when, fortunately or unfortunately, an oppor- 
tunity of perfect trial undeceived me at once, and for 
ever. The Trustees of the National Gallery commis- 



138 SESAME AND LILIES. 

sioned me to arrange tlie Turner drawings there, and 
permitted me to prepare three hundred examples of his 
studies from nature, for exhibition at Kensington. At 
Kensington they were and are, placed for exhibition ; 
but they are not exhibited, for the room in which they 
hang is always empty. 

102. Well — this showed me at once, that those ten 
years of my life had been, in their chief purpose, lost. 
For that, I did not so much care ; I had, at least, learned 
my own business thoroughly, and should be able, as I 
fondly supposed, after such a lesson, now to use my 
knowledge with better effect. But what I did care for, 
was the — to me frightful — discovery, that the most' 
splendid genius in the arts might be permitted by 
Providence to labour and perish uselessly ; that in the 
very fineness of it there might be something rendering 
it invisible to ordinary eyes ; but, that with this strange 
excellence, faults might be mingled which would be as 
deadly as its virtues were vain ; that the glory of it was 
perishable, as well as invisible, and the gift and grace 
of it might be to us, as snow in summer, and as rain in 
harvest. 

103. That was the first mystery of life to me. But, 
while my best energy was given to the study of painting. 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 139 

I had put collateral effort, more prudent, if less enthu- 
siastic, into that of architecture; and in this I could 
not complain of meeting with no sympathy. Among 
several personal reasons which caused me to desire that 
I might give this, my closing lecture on the subject of 
art here, in Ireland, one of the chief was, that in read- 
ing it, I should stand near the beautiful building, — the 
engineers' school of your college, — which was the first 
realization I had the joy to see, of the principles I had, 
until then, been endeavouring to teach ; but which alas, 
is now, to me, no more than the richly canopied monu- 
ment of one of the most earnest souls that ever gave 
itself to the arts, and one of my truest and most loving 
friends, Benjamin Woodward. Nor was it here in Ire- 
land only that I received the help of Irish sympathy 
and genius. When, to another friend. Sir Thomas 
Deane, with Mr. Woodward, was entrusted the building 
of the museum at Oxford, the best details of the work 
were executed by sculptors who had been born and 
trained here ; and the first window of the fagade of the 
building, in which was inaugurated the study of natural 
science in England, in true fellowship with literature, 
was carved from my design by an Irish sculptor. 

104 You may perhaps think that no man ought to 



140 SESAME AND LILIES. 

speak of disappointment, to whom, even in one branch 
of labour, so mnch success was granted. Had Mr. "Wood- 
ward now been beside me, I bad not so spoken ; but his 
gentle and passionate spirit was cut off from the fulfil- 
ment of its purposes, and the work we did together is 
now become vain. It may, not be so in future ; but the 
architecture we endeavoured to introduce is inconsistent 
alike with the reckless luxury, the deforming mecha- 
nism, and the squalid misery of modern cities ; among 
the formative fashions of the day, aided, especially in 
England, by ecclesiastical sentiment, it indeed obtained 
notoriety ; and sometimes behind an engine furnace, or 
a railroad bank, you may detect the pathetic discord of 
its momentary grace, and, with toil, decipher its floral 
carvings choked with soot. I felt answerable to the 
schools I loved, only for their injury. I perceived that 
this new portion of my strength had also been spent in 
vain; and from amidst streets of iron, and palaces of 
crystal, shrank back at last to the carving of the moun- 
tain and colour of the flower. 

105. And still I could tell of failure, and failure re- 
peated as years went on ; but I have trespassed enough 
on your patience to show you, in part, the causes of my 
discouragement. Now let me more deliberately tell you 



MYSTEKY OF LIFE AND ITS AKTS. 141 

its results. You know there is a tendency in the minds 
of many men, when they are heavily disappointed in 
the main purposes of their life, to feel, and perhaps in 
warning, perhaps in mockery, to declare, that life itself 
is a yanity. Because it has disappointed them, they 
think its nature is of disappointment always, Cr at best, 
of pleasure that can be grasped by imagination only ; 
that the cloud of it has no strength nor fire within ; but 
is a painted cloud only, to be delighted in, yet despised. 
You know how beautifully Pope has expressed this par- 
ticular phase of thought : — 

'^ Meanwhile opinion gilds, with yarying rays, 
These painted clouds that beautify our days ; 
Each want of happiness by hope supplied. 
And each yacuity of sense, by pride. 

Hope builds as fast as Knowledge can destroy ; 
In Eolly's cup, still laughs the bubble joy. 
One pleasure past, another still Ave gain. 
And not a vanity is given in vain." 

But the effect of failure upon my own mind has been j 
just the reverse of this. The more that my life disap- 
pointed me, the more solemn and wonderful it became 
to me. It seemed, contrarily to Pope's saying, that the 



142 SESAME AND LTLIES. 

vanity of it ivas indeed given in vain ; but that there 
was something behind the veil of it, which was not van- 
ity. It became to me not a painted cloud, but a terrible 
and impenetrable one : not a mirage, which vanished as 
I drew near, but a pillar of darkness, to which I was 
forbidden to draw near. For I saw that both my own 
failure, and such success in petty things as in its poor 
triumph seemed to me worse than failure, came from 
the want of sufficiently earnest effort to understand the 
whole law and meaning of existence, and to bring it to 
noble and due end ; as, on the other hand, I saw more 
and more clearly that all enduring success in the arts, 
or in any other occupation, had come from the ruling 
of lower purposes, not by a conviction of their nothing- 
ness, but by a solemn faith in the advancing power of 
human nature, or in the promise, however dimly appre- 
hended, that the mortal part of it would one day be 
swallowed up in immortality ; and that, indeed, the arts 
themselves never had reached any vital strength or 
honour but in the effort to proclaim this immortality, and 
in the service either of great and just religion, or of 
some unselfish patriotism, and law of such national life 
as must be the foundation of religion. 

106. Nothing that I have ever said is more true or 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 143 

necessary — nothing has been more misunderstood or 
misapplied — than my strong assertion, that the arts can 
never be right themselves, unless their motive is right. 
It is misunderstood this way : weak painters, who have 
never learned their business, and cannot lay a true line, 
continually come to me, crying out — "Look at this 
picture of mine ; it must be good, I had such a lovely 
motive. I have put my whole heart into it, and taken 
years to think over its treatment." "Well, the only 
answer for these people is — if one had the cruelty to 
make it — " Sir, you cannot think over amjihin^ in any 
number of years, — you haven't the head to do it ; and 
though you had fine motives, strong enough to make 
you burn yourself in a slow fire, if only first you could 
paint a picture, you can't paint one, nor half an inch 
of one ; you haven't the hand to do it." 

But, far more decisively we have to say to the men 
who do know their business, or may know it if they 
choose — " Sir, you have this gift and a mighty one ; see 
that you serve your nation faithfully with it. It is a 
greater trust than ships and armies : you might cast 
them away, if you were their captain, with less treason 
to your people than in casting your own glorious power 
away, and serving the devil with it instead of men. 



144 SESAME AND LILIES. 

Ships and armies you may replace if they are lost, but 
a great intellect, once abused, is a curse to the earth 
for ever." 

107. This, then, I meant by saying that the arts must 
have noble motive. This also I said respecting them, 
that they never had prospered, nor could prosper, but 
when they had such true purpose, and were devoted to 
the proclamation of divine truth or law. And yet I saw 
also that they had always failed in this proclamation — 
that poetry, and sculpture, and painting, though only 
great when they strove to teach us something about the 
gods, never had taught us anything trustworthy about 
the gods, but had always betrayed their trust in the 
crisis of it, and, with their powers at the full reach, 
became ministers to pride and to lust. And I felt also, 
with increasing amazement, the unconquerable apathy 
in ourselves the hearers, no less than in these the teach- 
ers ; and that, while the wisdom and rightness of every 
act and art of life could only be consistent with a right 
understanding of the ends of life, we were all plunged 
as in a languid dream — our heart fat, and our eyes 
heavy, and our ears closed, lest the inspiration of hand 
or voice should reach us — lest we should see with our 
eyes, and understand with our hearts, and be healed- 



MYSTEEY OF LITE AND ITS ARTS. 145 

108. This intense apathy in all of us is the first great 
mystery of life ; it stands in the way of every percep- 
tion, every virtue. There is no making ourselves feel 
enough astonishment at it. That the occupations or 
pastimes of life should have no motive, is understanda- 
ble ; but — That life itself should have no motive — that 
we neither care to find out what it may lead to, nor to 
guard against its being for ever taken away from us — 
here is a mystery indeed. For, just suppose I were 
able to call at this moment to any one in this audience 
by name, and to tell him positively that I knew a large 
estate had been lately left to him on some curious con- 
ditions ; but that, though I knew it was large, I did not 
know how lars'e, nor even where it was — whether in the 
East Indies or the West, or in England, or at the Antip- 
odes. I only knew it was a vast estate, and that there 
was a chance of his losing it altogether if he did not 
soon find out on what terms it had been left to him. 
Suppose I were able to say this positively to any single 
man in this audience, and he knew that I did not speak 
without warrant, do you think that he would rest con- 
tent with that vague knowledge, if it were anywise pos- 
sible to obtain more ? Would he not give every energy 
to find some trace of the facts, and never rest till he had 



146 SESAME AND LILIES. 

ascertained where this place was, and what it was like ? 
And suppose he were a young man, and all he could 
discover by his best endeavour was, that the estate was 
never to be his at all, unless he persevered, during cer- 
tain years of probation, in an orderly and industrious 
life ; but that, according to the rightness of his conduct, 
the portion of the estate assigned to him would be 
greater or less, so that it literally depended on his be- 
haviour from day to day whether he got ten thousand a 
year, or thirty thousand a year, or nothing whatever — 
would you not think it strange if the youth never troub- 
led himself to satisfy the conditions in any way, nor 
even to know what was required of him, but lived 
exactly as he chose, and never inquired whether his 
chances olthe estate were increasing or passing away? 
"Well, you know that this is actually and literally so 
with the greater number of the educated persons now 
living in Christian countries. Nearly every man and 
woman, in any company such as this, outwardly pro- 
fesses to believe — and a large number unquestionably 
think they believe — much more than this ; not only that 
a quite unlimited estate is in prospect for them if they 
please the Holder of it, but that the infinite contrary of 
such a possession — an estate of perpetual misery, is in 



MYSTEKY OF LIFE AND ITS AETS. 147 

store for them if they displease this great Land-Holder, 
this great Heaven-Holder. And yet there is not one in 
a thousand of these human souls that cares to think, for 
ten minutes of the day, where this estate is, or how 
beautiful it is, or what kind of life they are to lead in 
it, or what kind of life they must lead to obtain it. 

109. You fancy that you care to know this : so little 
do you care that, probably, at this moment many of you 
are displeased with me for talking of the matter ! You 
came to hear about the Art of this world, not about the 
Life of the next, and you are provoked with me for talk- 
ing of what you can hear any Sunday in church. But 
do not be afraid. I will tell you something before you 
go abouf pictures, and carvings, and pottery, and what 
else you would like better to hear of than the other 
world. Nay, perhaps you say, " We want you to talk 
of pictures and pottery, because we are sure that you 
know something of them, and you know nothing of the 
other world." Well — I don't. That is quite true. But 
the very strangeness and mystery of which I urge you 
to take notice is in this — that I do not ; — nor you either. 
Can you answer a single bold question unflinchingly 
about that other world — Are you sure there is a heaven? 
Sure there is a hell ? Sure that men are dropping be- 



148 BESAME AND LILIES. 

fore your faces through the pavements of these streets 
into eternal fire, or sure that they are not ? Sure that 
at your own death you are going to be delivered from 
all sorrow, to be endov/ed with all virtue, to be gifted 
with all felicity, and raised into perpetual companion- 
ship with a King, compared to whom the kings of the 
earth are as grasshoppers, and the nations as the dust 
of His feet ? Are you sure of this ? or, if not sure, do 
any of us so much as care to make it sure ? and, if not, 
how can anything that we do be right — how can any- 
thing we think be wise ; what honor can there be in the 
arts that amuse us, or what profit in the possessions 
that please ? 

Is not this a mystery of life ? 

110. But farther, you may, perhaps, think it a bene- 
ficent ordinance for the generality of men that they do 
not, with earnestness or anxiety, dwell on such questions 
of the future ; because the business of the day could not 
be done if this kind of thought were taken by all of us 
for the morrow. Be it so : but at least we might antici- 
pate that the greatest and wisest of us, who were evidently 
the appointed teachers of the rest, would set themselves 
apart to seek out whatever could be surely known of the 
future destinies of their race ; and to teach this in no 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 149 

rhetorical or ambiguous manner, but in the plainest and 
most severely earnest words. 

Now, the highest representatives of men who have 
thus endeavoured, during the Christian era, to search out 
these deep things, and relate them, are Dante and Milton. 
There are none who for earnestness of thought, for mas- 
tery of word, can be classed with these. I am not at 
present, mind you, speaking of persons set apart in any 
priestly or pastoral office, to deliver creeds to us, or doc- 
trines ; but of men who try to discover and set forth, as 
far as by human intellect is possible, the facts of the 
other world. Divines may perhaps teach us how to ar- 
rive there, but only these two poets have in any power- 
ful manner striven to discover, or in any definite words 
professed to tell, what we shall see and become there : 
or how those upper and nether worlds are, and have 
been, inhabited. 

111. And what have they told us ? Milton's account 
of the most important event in his whole system of the 
universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently unbeliev- 
able to himself ; and the more so, that it is wholly 
founded on, and in a great part spoiled and degraded 
from, Hesiod's account of the decisive war of the young- 
er gods with the Titans. The rest of his poem is a 



150 SESAME AND LILIES. 

picturesque drama, in which every artifice of invention 
is visibly and consciously employed, not a single fact 
being, for an instant, conceived as tenable by any living 
faitli. Dante's conception is far more intense, and, by 
himself, for the time, not to be escaped from ; it is in- 
deed a vision, but a vision only, and that one of the 
wildest that ever entranced a soul — a dream in which 
every grotesque type or phantasy of heathen tradition 
is renewed, and adorned ; and the destinies of the Chris- 
tian Church, tinder their most sacred symbols, become 
literally subordinate to the praise, and are only to be 
understood by the aid, of one dear Florentine maiden. 

112. I tell you truly that, as I strive more with this 
strange lethargy and trance in myself, and awake to the 
meaning and power of life, it seems daily more amazing 
to me that men such as these should dare to play with 
the most precious truths (or the most deadly untruths), 
by which the whole human race listening to them could 
be informed, or deceived ; — all the world their audi- 
ences for ever, with pleased ear, and passionate heart ; 
— and yet, to this submissive infinitude of souls, and 
evermore succeeding and succeeding multitude, hun- 
gry for bread of life, they do but play upon sweetly 
modulated pipes ; with pompous nomenclature adorn 



MYSTEEY OF LIFE AND ITS ABTS. 151 

the councils of hell ; touch a troubadour's guitar to the 
courses of the suns ; and fill the openings of eternity, 
before which prophets have veiled their faces, and 
which angels desire to look into, with idle puppets of 
their scholastic imagination, and melancholy lights of 
frantic faith in their lost mortal love. 

Is not this a mystery of life ? 

113. But more. We have to remember that these two 
great teachers were both of them warped in their tem- 
per, and thwarted in their search for truth. They were 
men of intellectual war, unable, through darkness of 
controversy, or stress of personal grief, to discern where 
their own ambition modified their utterances of the 
moral law ; or their own agony mingled with their anger 
at its violation. But greater men than these have been — 
innocent-hearted — too great for contest. Men, like Ho- 
mer and Shakespeare, of so unrecognized personality, 
that it disappears in future ages, and becomes ghostly, 
like the tradition of a lost heathen god. Men, therefore, 
to whose unoffended, uncondemning sight, the whole of 
human nature reveals itself in a pathetic weakness, with 
which they will not strive ; or in mournful and transi- 
tory strength, which they dare not praise. And all Pagan 
and Christian civilization thus becomes subject to them. 



152 SESAIME AND LILIES. 

It does not matter liow little, or how much, any of us 
have read, either of Homer or Shakespeare : everything 
round us, in substance, or in thought, has been moulded 
by them. All Greek gentlemen were educated under 
Homer. All Eoman gentlemen, by Greek literature. 
All Italian, and French, and English gentlemen, by 
Roman literature, and by its principles. Of the scope 
of Shakespeare, I will say only, that the intellectual 
measure of every man since born, in the domains of crea- 
tive thought, may be assigned to him, according to the 
degree in which he has been taught by Shakespeare. 
Well, what do thq^se two men, centres of moral intelli- 
gence, deliver to us of conviction respecting what it 
most behoves that intelligence to grasp ? What is their 
hope ; their crown of rejoicing? what manner of exhor- 
tation have they for us, or of rebuke ? what lies next 
their own hearts, and dictates their- undying words ? 
Have they any peace to promise to our unrest — any re- 
demption to our misery ? 

114 Take Homer first, and think if there is any sad- 
der image of human fate than the great Homeric story. 
The main features in the character of Achilles are its 
intense desire of justice, and its tenderness of. affection. 
And in that bitter song of the Iliad, this man, though 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 153 

aided continually by the wisest of the gods, and burning 
with the desire of justice in his heart, becomes yet, 
through ill -governed passion, the most unjust of men : 
and, full of the deepest tenderness in his heart, becomes 
yet, through ill-governed passion, the most cruel of men. 
Intense alike in love and in friendship, he loses, first his 
mistress, and then his friend ; for the sake of the one, he 
surrenders to death the armies of his own land ; for the 
sake of the other, he surrenders all. Will a man lay 
down his life for his friend? Yea — even for his dead 
friend, this Achilles, though goddess-born, and goddess- 
taught, gives up his kingdom, his country, and his life — 
casts alike the innocent and guilty, with himself, into 
one gulf of slaughter, and dies at last by the hand of the 
basest of his adversaries. Is not this a mystery of life ? 
115. But what, then, is the message to us of our own 
poet, and searcher of hearts, after fifteen hundred years 
of Christian faith have been numbered over the graves 
of men ? Are his words more cheerful than the hea- 
then's — is his hope more near — his trust more sure — his 
reading of fate more happy ? Ah, no ! He diflers from 
the Heathen poet chiefly in this— that he recognizes, for 
deliverance, no gods nigh at hand ; and that, by petty 

chance — by momentary folly — by broken message — by 

7* 



154 SESAME AXD LILIES. 

fool's tyranny — or traitor's snare, the strongest and most 
righteous are brought to their ruin, and perish without 
word of hope. He indeed, as part of his rendering of 
character, ascribes the power and modesty of habitual 
devotion, to the gentle and the just. The death-bed of 
Katharine is bright with vision of angels ; and the great 
soldier-king, standing by his few dead, acknowledges the 
presence of the hand that can save alike by many or by 
few. But observe that from those who with deepest 
spirit, meditate, and with deeepest passion, mourn, 
there are no such words as these ; nor in their hearts 
are any such consolations. Instead of the perpetual 
sense of the helpful presence of the Deity, which, 
through all heathen tradition, is the source of heroic 
strength, in battle, in exile, and in the valley of the 
shadow of death, we find only in the great Christian 
poet, the consciousness of a moral law, through which 
"the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make 
instruments to scourge us ;" and of the resolved arbi- 
tration of the destinies, that conclude into precision of 
doom what we feebly and blindly began ; and force us, 
when our indiscretion serves us, and our deepest plots 
do pall, to the confession, that " there's a divinity that 
shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will." 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS AKTS. 155 

Is not this a mystery of life ? 

116. Be it so then. About this human life that is to 
be, or that is, the wise religious men tell us nothing 
that we can trust ; and the wise contemplative men, 
nothing that can give us peace. But there is yet a third 
class, to whom we may turn — the wise practical men. 
We have sat at the feet of the poets who sang of heaven, 
and they have told us their dreams. We have listened 
to the poets who sang of earth, and they have chanted 
to us dirges, and words of despair. But there is one 
class of men more : — men, not capable of vision, nor 
sensitive to sorrow, but firm of purpose — practised in 
business : learned in all that can be, (by handling, — ) 
known. Men whose hearts and hopes are wholly in 
this present world, from whom, therefore, we may surely 
learn, at least, how, at present, conveniently to live in 
it. What will they say to us, or show us by example ? 
These kings — these councillors — these statesmen and 
builders of kingdoms — these capitalists and men of 
business, who v^^eigh the earth, and the dust of it, in a 
balance. They know the world, surely ; and what is the 
mystery of life to us, is none to them. They can surely 
show us how to live, while we live, and to gather out 
of the present world what is best. 



156 SESAME AND LILIES. 

117. I think I can best tell you their answer, by tell- 
ing you a dream I had once. For though I am no 
poet, I have dreams sometimes : — I dreamed I was at a 
child's May-day party, in which every means of enter- 
tainment had been j)i'ovided for them, by a wise and 
kind host. It was in a stately house, with beautiful 
gardens attached to it ; and the children had been set 
free in the rooms and gardens, with no care whatever 
but how to pass their afternoon rejoicingly. They did 
not, indeed, know much about what was to happen next 
day ; and some of them, I thought, were a little fright- 
ened, because there was a chance of their being sent to 
a new school where there were examinations ; but they 
kept the thoughts of that out of their heads as well as 
they could, and resolved to enjoy themselves. The 
house, I said, was in a beautiful garden, and in the 
garden were all kinds of flowers ; sweet grassy banks 
for rest ; and smooth lawns for play ; and pleasant 
streams and woods ; and rocky places for climbing. And 
the children were happy for a little while, but presently 
they separated themselves into parties ; and then each 
party declared, it would have a piece of the garden for 
its own, and that none of the others should have any- 
thing to do with that piece. Next, they quarrelled vio- 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS AETS. 157 

lently, which pieces they would have ; and at last the 
boys took up the thing, as boys should do, " practic- 
ally," and fought in the flower-beds till there was hardly 
a flower left standing ; then they trampled down each 
other's bits of the garden out of spite ; and the girls 
cried till they could cry no more ; and so they all lay 
down at last breathless in the ruin, and waited for the 
time when they were to be taken home in the evening.^" 
118. Meanwhile, the children in the house had been 
making themselves happy also in their manner. For 
them, there had been provided every kind of in-doors 
pleasure : there was music for them to dance to ; and 
the library v/as open, with all manner of amusing books ; 
and there v/as a museum, full of the most cu«rious shells, 
and animals, and birds ; and there was a workshop, with 
lathes and carpenter's tools, for the ingenious boys ; and 
there were pretty fantastic dresses, for the girls to dress 
in ; and there were microscopes, and kaleidoscopes ; and 
whatever toys a child could fancy ; and a table, in the 
dining-room, loaded with everything nice to eat. 

* I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it to 
set forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and 
what follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for 
wealth. 



158 SESAME AND LILIES. 

« 

But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three 
of the more "practical" children, that they would like 
some of the brass-headed nails that studded the chairs ; 
and so they set to work to pull them out. Presently, 
the others, who were reading, or looking at shells, took 
a fancy to do the like ; and, in a little while, all the 
children, nearly, were spraining their fingers, in pulling 
out brass-headed nails. With all that they could pull 
out, they were not satisfied ; and then, everybody wanted 
some of somebody else's. And at last the really prac- 
tical and sensible ones declared, that nothing was of any 
real consequence, that afternoon, except to get plenty 
of brass-headed nails ; and that the books, and the 
cakes, and the microscopes were of no use at all in them- 
selves, but only, if they could be exchanged for nail- 
heads. And, at last, they began to fight for nail-heads, 
as the others fought for the bits of garden. Only here 
and there, a despised one shrank away into a corner, 
and tried to get a little quiet with a book, in the midst 
of the noise ; but all the practical ones thought of noth- 
ing else but counting nail-heads all the afternoon — even 
though they knew they would not be allowed to carry 
so much as one brass knob away with them. But no — 
it was — " who has most nails ? I have a hundred, and 



MYSTEBY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 159 

you have fifty; or, I have a thousand and you have 
two. I must have as many as you before I leave the 
house, or I cannot possibly go home in peace." At 
last, they made so much noise that I awoke, and 
thought to myself, "What a false dream that is, of 
children.'" The child is the father of the man; and 
wiser. Children never do such foolish things. Only 
men do. 

119. But there is yet one last class of persons to be 
interrogated. The wise religious men we have asked 
in vain ; the wise contemplative men, in vain ; the wise 
worldly men, in vain. But there is another group yet. 
In the midst of this vanity of empty religion — of tragic 
contemplation — of wrathful and wretched ambition, and 
dispute for dust, there' is yet one great group of persons, 
by whom all these disputers live — the persons who have 
determined, or have had it by a beneficent Providence 
determined for them, that they will do something iise- 
ful ; that whatever may be prepared for them hereafter, 
or happen to them here, they will, at least, deserve the 
food that God gives them by winning it honourably ; 
and that, however fallen from the purity, or far from 
the peace, of Eden, they wdll carry out the duty of 
human dominion, though they have lost its felicity ; and 



160 SESAIVIE AND LILIES. 

dress and keep the wilderness, though they no more can 
dress or keep the garden. 

These,— hewers of wood, and drawers of water — these 
bent nnder burdens, or torn of scourges — thes«, that 
dig and weave — that plant and build ; workers in wood, 
and in marble, and in iron — by whom all food, clothing, 
habitation, furniture, and means of delight are produced, 
for themselves, and for all men beside ; men, whose 
deeds are good, though their words may be few ; men, 
whose lives are serviceable, be they never so short, and 
worthy of honour, be they never so humble;— from 
these, surely at least, we may receive some clear mes- 
sage of teaching : and pierce, for an instant, into the 
mystery of life, and of its arts. 

120. Yes ; from these, at last, we do receive a lesson. 
But I grieve to say, or rather — for that is the deeper 
truth of the matter — I rejoice to say — this message of 
theirs can only be received by joining them — not by 
thinking about them. 

You sent for me to talk to you of art ; and I have 
obeyed you in coming. But the main thing I have to 
tell you is, — that art must not be talked about. The 
fact that there is talk about it at all, signifies that it is 
ill done, or cannot be done. No true painter ever speaks, 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 161 

or ever has spoken, much of his art. The greatest speak 
nothing. Even Reynolds is no exception, for he wrote 
of all that he could not himself do, and was utterly 
silent respecting all that he himself did. 

The moment a man can really do his work, he be- 
comes speechless about it. All words become idle to 
him — all theories. 

121. Does a bird need to theorize about building its 
nest, or boast of it when built ? All good work is es- 
sentially done that way — without hesitation, without 
difficulty, without boasting ; and in the doers of the 
best, there is an inner and involuntary power- which 
approximates literally to the instinct of an animal — nay, 
I am certain that in the most perfect human artists, 
reason does not supersede instinct, but is added to an 
instinct as much more divine than that of the lower 
animals as the human body is more beautiful than 
theirs ; that a great singer sings not with less instinct 
than the nightingale, but with more — only more various, 
applicable, and governable ; that a great architect does 
not build with less instinct than the beaver or the bee, 
but with more — with an innate cunning of proportion 
that embraces all beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill 
that improvises all construction. But be that as it may 



162 SESAME AND LILIES. 

— be the instinct less or more than that of inferior ani- 
mals — like or unlike theirs, still the human art is 
dependent on that first, and then upon an amount of 
practice, of science, — and of imagination disciplined by 
thought, which the true possessor of it knows to be in- 
communicable, and the true critic of it, inexplicable, 
except through long process of laborious years. That 
journey of life's conquest, in which hills over hills, and 
Alps on Alps arose, and sank, — do you think you can 
make another trace it painlessly, by talking ? Why, you 
cannot even carry us up an Alp, by talking. You can guide 
us up.^it, step by step, no otherwise — even so, best 
silently. You girls, who have been among the hills, 
know how the bad guide chatters and gesticulates, and 
it is " put your foot here," and " mind how you balance 
yourself there ; " but the good guide walks on quietly, 
without a word, only with his eyes on you when need is, 
and his arm like an iron bar, if need be. 

122. In that slow way, also, art can be taught — if you 
have faith in your guide, and will let his arm be to you 
as an iron bar when need is. But in what teacher of aft 
have you such faith ? Certainly not in me ; for, as I 
told you at first, I know well enough it is only because 
you think I can talk, not because you think I know my 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 163 

"business, that you let me speak to you at all. If I were 
to tell you anything that seemed to you strange, you 
would not believe it, and yet it would only be in telling 
you strange things that I could be of use to you. I 
could be of great use to you — infinite use, with brief 
saying, if you would believe it ; but you would not, just 
because the thing that would be of real use would dis- 
please you. You are all wild, for instance, with admir- 
ation of Gustave Dore. Well, suppose I were to tell you 
in the strongest terms I could use, that Gustave Dore's 
art was bad — bad, not in weakness, — not in failure, — 
but bad with dreadful power — the power of the Furies 
and the Harpies mingled, enraging, and polluting ; that 
so long as you looked at it, no perception of pure or 
beautiful art was possible for you. Suppose I were to 
tell you that ! What would be the use ? Would you look 
at Gustave Dore less ? Eather more, I fancy. On the 
other hand, I could soon put you into good humour with 
me, if I chose. I know well enough what you like, and 
how to praise it to your better liking. I could talk to 
you about moonlight, and twilight, and spring flowers, 
and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas of Raphael — how 
motherly ! and the Sibyls of Michael Angelo — how ma- 
jestic ! and the Saints of Angelico — how pious ! and the 



164 SESAME AND LILIES. 

Cherubs of Correggio — how delicious ! Old as I am, I 
could play you a tune on the harp yet, that you would 
dance to. But neither you nor I should be a bit the 
better or wiser ; or, if we were, our increased wisdom 
could be of no practical effect. For, indeed, the arts, as 
regards teachableness, differ from the sciences also in 
this, that their power is founded not merely on facts 
which can be communicated, but on dispositions which 
require to be created. Art is neither to be achieved by 
effort of thinking, nor explained by accuracy of speaking. 
It is the instinctive and necessary result of powers 
which can only be developed through the mind of suc- 
cessive generations, and which finally burst into life 
under social conditions as slow of growth as the facul- 
ties they regulate. Whole seras of mighty history are 
summed, and the passions of dead myriads are concen- 
trated, in the existence of a noble art ; and if that noble 
art were among us, we should feel it and rejoice ; not 
caring in the least to hear lectures on it ; and since it is 
not among us, be assured we have to go back to the 
root of it, or, at least, to the place where the stock of it 
is yet alive, and the branches began to die. 

123. And now, may I have your pardon for pointing 
out, partly with reference to matters which are at this 



MYSTERY OF LITE AND ITS ARTS. 165 

time of greater moment than tlie arts — that if we under- 
took such recession to the vital germ of national arts 
that have decayed, we should find a more singular arrest 
of their power in Ireland than in any other European 
country. For in the eighth century, Ireland possessed 
a school of art in her manuscripts and sculpture, which, 
in many of its qualities— apparently in all essential 
qualities of decorative invention— was qifite without 
rival ; seeming as if it might have advanced to the high- 
est triumphs in architecture and in painting. But there 
was one fatal flaw in its nature, by which it was stayed, 
and stayed with a conspicuousness of pause to which 
there is no parallel : so that, long ago, in tracing the 
progress of European schools from infancy to strength, 
I chose for the students of Kensington, in a lecture 
since published, two characteristic examples of early 
art, of equal skill ; but in the one case, skill which was 
progressive— in the other, skill which was at pause. In 
tbe one case, it was work receptive of correction— hun- 
gry for correction— and in the other, work which inher- 
ently rejected correction. I chose for them a corrigible 
Eve, and an incorrigible Angel, and I grieve to say that 
the incorrigible Angel was also an Irish angel ! ^^ 
* See The Two Paths, p. 27. 



166 SESAME AND LILIES. 

124. And the fatal difference lay wholly in this. In 
both pieces of art there was an equal falling short of the 
needs of fact ; but the Lombardic Eve knew she was in 
the wrong, and the Irish Angel thought himself all 
right. The eager Lombardic sculptor, though firmly 
insisting on his childish idea, yet showed in the irregu- 
lar broken touches of the features, and the imperfect 
struggle fo* softer lines in the form, a perception of 
beauty and law that he could not render ; there was the 
strain of effort, under conscious imperfection, in every 
line. But the Irish missal-painter had drawn his angel 
with no sense of failure, in happy complacency, and put 
red dots into the palms of each hand, and rounded the 
eyes into perfect circles, and, I regret to say, left the 
mouth out altogether, with perfect satisfaction to him- 
self. 

125. May I without offence ask you to consider 
whether this mode of arrest in ancient Irish art may 
not be indicative of points of character which even yet, 
in some measure, arrest your national power ? I have 
seen much of Irish character, and have watched it 
closely, for I have also much loved it. And I think the 
form of failure to which it is most liable is this, that 
being generous-hearted, and wholly intending always to 



MYSTEBY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 167 

do right, it does not attend to the external laws of right, 
but thinks it must necessarily do right because it means 
to do so, and therefore does wrong without finding it 
out ; and then when the consequences of its wrong come 
upon it, or upon others connected with it, it cannot con- 
ceive tliat the wrong is in anywise of its causing or of 
its doing, but flies into wrath, and a strange agony of 
desire for justice, as feeling itself wholly innocent, 
which leads it farther astray, until there is nothing that 
it is not capable of doing with a good conscience. 

126. But mind, I do not mean to say that, in past or 
present relations between Ireland and England, you 
have been wrong, and we right. Far from that, I be- 
lieve that in all great questions of principle, and in all 
details of administration of law, you have been usually 
right, and we wrong ; sometimes in misunderstanding 
you, sometimes in resolute iniquity to you. Neverthe- 
less, in all disputes between states, though the strongest 
is nearly always mainly in the wrong, the weaker is 
often so in a minor degree ; and I think we sometimes 
admit the possibility of our being in error, and you 
never do. 

127. And now, returning to the broader question 
what these arts and labours of life have to teach us of 



168 SESAME AND LILIES. 

its mystery, this is tlie first of their lessons — that the 
more beautiful the art, the more it is essentially the 
work of people who fed themselves ivrong ; — who are 
striving for the fulfilment of a law, and the grasp of a 
loveliness, which they have not yet attained, which they 
feel even farther and farther from attaining, the more 
they strive for it. And yet, in still deeper sense, it is 
the work of j)eople who know also that they are right. 
The very sense of inevitable error from their purpose 
marks the perfectness of that purpose, and the continued 
sense of failure arises from the continued opening of 
the eyes more clearly to all the sacredest laws of truth. 
128. This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, 
and greatly precious one, namely : — that whenever the 
arts and labours of life are fulfilled in this spirit of 
striving against misrule, and doing whatever we have 
to do, honourably and perfectly, they invariably bring 
happiness, as much as seems possible to the nature of 
man. In all other paths, by which that happiness is 
pursued, there is disappointment, or destruction : for 
ambition and for passion there is no rest — no fruition ; 
the fairest pleasures of youth perish in a darkness 
greater than their past light ; and the loftiest and purest 
love too often does but inflame the cloud of life with 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 169 

endless fire of pain. But, ascending from lowest to 
highest, through every scale of human industry, that 
industry worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the la- 
bourer in the field, at the forge, or in the mine ; ask the 
patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, 
fiery-hearted worker in bronze, and in marble, and with 
the colours of light ; and none of these, who are true 
workmen, will ever tell you, that they have found the 
law of heaven an unkind one — that in the sw^eat of their 
face they should eat bread, till they return to the 
ground; nor that they ever found it an unrewarded 
obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered faithfully to the 
command — "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do — do it 
with thy might." 

129. These are the two great and constant lessons 
which our labourers teach us of the mystery of life. 
But there is another, and a sadder one, which they can- 
not teach us, which we must read on their tombstones. 

"Do it with thy might." There have been myriads 
upon myriads of human creatures who have obeyed this 
lav/ — who have put every breath and nerve of their 
being into its toil — who have devoted every hour, and 
exhausted every faculty — who have bequeathed their 
unaccomplished thoughts at death — who being dead, 



170 SESAME AND LILIES. 

have yet spoken, by majesty of memory, and strength 
of example. And, at last, what has all this "Might " of 
humanity accomplished, in six thousand years of labour 
and sorrow ? What has it done ? Take the three chief 
occupations and arts of men, one by one, and count 
their achievements. Begin with the first — the lord of 
them all — agriculture. Six thousand years have passed 
since we were set to till the ground, from which we were 
taken. How much of it is tilled ? How much of that 
which is, wisely or well ? In the very centre and chief 
garden of Europe — where the two forms of parent 
Christianity have had their fortresses — where the noble 
Catholics of the Forest Cantons, and the noble Protest- 
ants of the Yaudois valleys, have maintained, for date- 
less ages, their faiths and liberties — there the unchecked 
Alpine rivers yet run wild in devastation : and the 
marshes, which a few hundred men could redeem with 
a year's labour, still blast their helpless inhabitants into 
fevered idiotism. That is so, in the centre of Europe ! 
While, on the near coast of Africa, once the Garden of 
the Hesperides, an Arab woman, but a few sunsets since, 
ate her child, for famine. And, with all the treasures 
of the East at our feet, we, in our own dominion, could 
not find a few grains of rice, for a people that asked of 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 171 

US no more ; but stood by, and saw five hundred thou- 
sand of tliem perish of hunger. 

130. Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, take 
the next head of human arts — weaving ; the art of 
queens, honored of all noble Heathen women, in the 
person of their virgin goddess — honoured of all Hebrew 
women, by the word of their wisest king — " She layeth 
her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the dis- 
taff ; she stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is 
not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her 
household are clothed with scarlet. She maketh herself 
covering of tapestry, her clothing is silk and purple. 
She maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and delivereth 
girdles to the merchant." What have we done in all 
these thousands of years with this bright art of Greek 
maid and Christian matron? Six thousand years of 
weaving, and have we learned to weave ? Might not 
every naked wall have been purple with tapestry, and 
every feeble breast fenced with sweet colours from the 
cold ? What have we done ? Our fingers are too few, 
it seems, to twist together some poor covering for our 
bodies. We set our streams to work for us, and choke 
the air with fire, to turn our spinning-wheels — and, — 
are we yet clothed ? Are not the streets of the capitals 



172 SESAME AND LILIES. 

of Europe foul with the sale of cast clouts and rotten 
rags? Is not the beauty of your sweet children left in 
wretchedness of disgrace, while, with better honour, 
nature clothes the brood of the bird in its nest, and the 
suckling of the wolf in her den ? And does not every 
winter's snow robe what you have not robed, and shroud 
what you have not shrouded ; and every winter's wind 
bear up to heaven its wasted souls, to witness against 
you hereafter, by the voice of their Christ, — "I was 
naked, and ye clothed me not ? " 

131. Lastly — take the Art of Building — the strongest 
— proudest — most orderly — most enduring of the arts 
of man, that, of which the produce is in the surest man- 
ner accumulative, and need not perish, or be replaced ; 
but if once well done, will stand more strongly than the 
unbalanced rocks — more prevalently than the crumb- 
ling hills. The art which is associated with all civic 
pride and sacred principle ; with which men record 
their power — satisfy their enthusiasm — make sure their 
defence — define and make dear their habitation. And, 
in six thousand years of building, what have we done ? 
Of the greater part of all that skill and strength, no ves- 
tige is left, but fallen stones, that encumber the fields 
and impede the streams. But, from this waste of dis- 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 173 

order, and of time, and of rage, what is left to ns ? 
Constructive and progressive creatures, that we are, 
with ruling brains, and forming hands, capable of fel- 
lowship, and thirsting for fame, can we not contend, in 
comfort, with the insects of the forest, or, in achieve- 
ment, with the worm of the cea. The white surf rages 
in vain against the ramparts built by poor atoms of 
scarcely nascent life ; but only ridges of formless ruin 
mark the places where once dwelt our noblest multi- 
tudes. The ant and the moth have cells for each of 
their young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps, 
in homes that consume them like graves ; and night by 
night, from the corners of our streets, rises up the cry 
of the homeless — " I was a stranger, and ye took me 
not in." 

132. Must it be always thus ? Is our life for ever 
to be without profit — without possession ? Shall the 
strength of its generations be as barren as death ; or 
cast away their labour, as the wild figtree casts her un- 
timely figs ? Is it all a dream then — the desire of the 
eyes and the pride of life — or, if it be, might we not live 
in nobler dream than this ? The poets and prophets, 
the wise men, and the scribes, though they have told us 
nothing about a life to come, have told us much about 



174 SESAME AXD LILIES. 

the life that is now. Thej have had — they also, — their 
dreams, and we have laughed at them. They have 
dreamed of mercy, and of justice ; they have dreamed 
of peace and good-will ; they have dreamed of labour 
undisappointed, and of rest undisturbed ; they have 
dreamed of fulness in harvest, and overflowing in store ; 
they have dreamed of wisdom in council, and of provi- 
dence in law ; of gladness of parents, and strength of 
children, and glory of grey hairs. And at these visions 
of theirs we have mocked, and held them for idle and 
vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What have we 
accomplished with our realities ? Is this what has come 
of our worldly wisdom, tried against their folly ? this 
our mightiest possible, against their impotent ideal ? or 
have we only wandered among the spectra of a baser 
felicity, and chased phantoms of the tombs, instead of 
visions of the Almighty ; and walked after the imagina- 
tions of our evil hearts, instead of after the counsels of 
Eternity, until our lives — not in the likeness of the 
cloud of heaven, but of the smoke of hell — have become 
" as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then 
vanisheth away ? " 

133. Does it vanish then ? Are you sure of that ? — 
sure, that the nothingness of the grave will be a rest 



MYSTEBY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 175 

from this troubled nothingness ; and that the coiling 
shadow, which disquiets itself in vain, cannot change 
into the smoke of the torment that ascends for ever? 
"Will any answer that they are sure of it, and that there 
is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labour, whither 
they go ? Be it so ; will you not, then, make as sure of 
the Life, that now is, as you are of the Death that is to 
come ? Your hearts are wholly in this world — will you 
not give them to it wisely, as well as perfectly ? And see, 
first of all, that you have hearts, and sound hearts, too, 
to give. Because you have no heaven to look for, is that 
any reason that you should remain ignorant of this won- 
derful and infinite earth, which is firmly and instantly 
given you in possession ? Although your days are num- 
bered, and the following darkness sure, is it necessary 
that you should share the degradation of the brute, be- 
cause you are condemned to its mortality ; or live the life 
of the moth, and of the worm, because you are to com- 
panion them in the dust ? Not so ; we may have but a few 
thousands of days to spend, perhaps hundreds only — 
perhaps tens ; nay, the longest of our time and best, 
looked back on, will be but as a moment, as the twink- 
ling of an eye ; still, we are men, not insects ; we are 
living spirits, not passing clouds. " He maketh the winds 



176 SESAME AND LILIES. 

His messengers ; the momentary fire, His minister ; " and 
shall we do less than these ? Let us do the work of men 
while we bear the form of them ; and, as we snatch our 
narrow portion of time out of Eternity, snatch also our 
narrow inheritance of passion out of Immortality — 
even though our lives he as a vapour, that appeareth for 
a little time,' and then vanisheth away. 

134 But there are some of you who believe not this — 
who think this cloud of life has no such close — that it is 
to float, revealed and illumined, upon the floor of heav- 
en, in the day when He cometh with clouds, and every 
eye shall see Him. Some day, you believe, within these 
five, or ten, or twenty years, for every one of us the 
judgment will be set, and the books opened. If that be 
true, far more than that must be true. Is there but one 
day of judgment ? Why, for us every day is a day of 
judgment — every day is a Dies Irse, and writes its irrev- 
ocable verdict in the flame of its West. Think you that 
judgment waits till the doors of the grave are opened ? It 
waits at the doors of your houses — it vf aits at the corners 
of your streets ; we are in the midst of judgment — the 
insects that we crush are our judges — the moments we 
fret away are our judges — the elements that feed us, 
judge, as they minister — and the pleasures that deceive 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS AETS. 177 

US, judge as tliey indulge. Let us, for our lives, do tlie 
work of Men Y>^liile we bear tlie Form of them, if indeed 
those lives are Not as a vapour, and do Not vanish away, 
135. " The work of men " — and what is that ? Well, 
we may any of us know very quickly, on the condition 
of being wholly ready to do it. But many of us are for 
the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of 
what we are to get ; and the best of us are sunk into the 
sin of Ananias, and it is a mortal one— we want to keep 
back part of the price ; and we continually talk of taking 
up our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the iceiglit 
of it— as if it was only a thing to be carried, instead of 
to be— crucified upon. " They that are His have cruci- 
fied the flesh, with the affections and lusts." Does that 
mean, think you, that in time of national distress, of 
religious trial, of crisis for every interest and hope of 
humanity— none of us will cease jesting, none cease 
idling, none put themselves to any wholesome work, 
none take so much as a tag of lace off their footman's 
coats, to save the world ? Or does it rather mean, that 
they are ready to leave houses, lands, and kindreds- 
yes, and life, if need be ? Life !— some of us are ready 
enough to throw that away, joyless as we have made it. 
But " station in Life "—how many of us are ready to 
8* 



178 SESAME AND LILIES. 

quit that ? Is it not always the great objection, where 
there is question of finding something useful to do — 
*' We cannot leave our stations in Life ? " 

Those of us who really cannot — that is to say, who 
can only maintain themselves by continuing in some 
business or salaried office, have already something to 
do ; and all that they have to see to, is that they do it 
honestly and with all their might. But with most peo- 
ple who use that apology, " remaining in the station of 
life to which Providence has called them," means keep- 
ing all the carriages, and all the footmen and large 
houses they can possibly pay for ; and, once for all, I 
say that if ever Providence did put them into stations 
of that sort — which is not at all a matter of certainty — 
Providence is just now very distinctly calling them out 
again. Levi's station in life was the receipt of custom ; 
and Peter's, the shore of Galilee ; and Paul's, the ante- 
chambers of the High Priest, — which " station in life " 
each had to leave, with brief notice. 

And, whatever our station in life may be, at this crisis, 
those of us who mean to fulfil our duty ought, first, to 
live on as little as we can ; and, secondly, to do all the 
wholesome work for it we can, and to spend all we can 
spare in doing all the sure good we can. 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 179 

And sure good is first in feeding people, then in dress- 
ing people, then in lodging people, and lastly in rightly- 
pleasing people, with arts, or sciences, or any other 
subject of thought. 

136. I say first in feeding ; and, once for all, do not 
let yourselves be deceived by any of the common talk 
of "indiscriminate charity." The order to us is not to 
feed the deserving hungry, nor the industrious hungry, 
nor the amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but simply 
to feed the hungry. It is quite true, infallibly true, 
that if any man will not work, neither should he eat — 
think of that, and every time you sit down to your din- 
ner, ladies and gentlemen, say solemnly, before you ask 
a blessing, " How much work have I done to-day for my 
dinner? " But the proper way to enforce that order on 
those below you, as well as on yourselves, is not to leave 
vagabonds and honest people to starve together, but 
very distinctly to discern and seize your vagabond ; and 
shut your vagabond up out of honest people's way, and 
very sternly then see that, until he has worked, he does 
not eat. But the first thing is to be sure you have the 
food to give ; and, therefore, to enforce the organization 
of vast activities in agriculture and in commerce, for the 
production of the wholesomest food, and proper storing 



180 SESAME AND LILIES. 

and distribution of it, so that no famine shall any more 
be possible among civilized beings. There is plenty of 
work in this business alone, and at once, for any num- 
ber of people who like to engage in it. 

137. Secondly, dressing people — that is to say, urging 
every one within reach of your influence to be always 
neat and clean, and giving them means of being so. In 
so far as they absolutely refuse, you must give up the 
effort with respect to them, only taking care that no 
children within your sphere of influence shall any more 
be brought up v/ith such habits ; and that every person 
who is willing to dress with propriety shall have en- 
couragement to do so. And the first absolutely neces- 
sary step towards this is the gradual adoption of a con- 
sistent dress for different ranks of persons, so that their 
rank shall be known by their dress ; and the restriction 
of the changes of fashion within certain limits. All 
which appears for the present quite impossible ; but it 
is only so far as even difficult as it is difficult to conquer 
our vanity, frivolity, and desire to appear what we are 
not. And it is not, nor ever shall be, creed of mine, 
that these mean and shallow vices are unconquerable 
by Christian women. 

138. And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you 



MYSTERY OF LITE AND ITS AETS. 181 

may think sliould have been put first, but I put it third, 
because we must feed and clothe people where we find 
them, and lodge them afterwards. And providing lodg- 
ment for them means a great deal of vigorous legisla- 
tion, and cutting down of vested interests that stand in 
the way, and after that, or before that, so far as we can 
get it, thorough sanitary and remedial action in the 
houses that we have ; and then the building of more, 
strongly, beautifully, and in groups of limited extent, 
kept in proportion to their streams, and walled round, 
so that there may be no festering and wretched suburb 
anywhere, but clean and busy street within, and the 
open country without, with a belt of beautiful garden 
and orchard round the walls, so that from any part of 
the city perfectly fresh air and grass, and sight of far 
horizon might be reachable in a few minutes' walk. 
This the final aim ; but in immediate action every minor 
and possible good to be instantly done, when, and as, 
we can ; roofs mended that have holes in them—fences 
patched that have gaps in them— walls buttressed that 
totter— and floors propped that shake ; cleanliness and 
order enforced with our own hands and eyes, till we 
are breathless, every day. And all the fine arts will 
healthily follow. I myself have washed a fiight of stone 



182 SESAIHE AND LILIES. 

stairs all down, with bucket and broom, in a Savoy inn, 
where they hadn't washed their stairs since they first 
went up them ? and I never made a better sketch than 
that afternoon. * 

139. These, then, are the three first needs of civilized 
life ; and the law for every Christian man and woman is, 
that they shall be in direct service towards one of these 
three needs, as far as is consistent with their own spec- 
ial occupation, and if they have no special business, then 
wholly in one of these services. And out of such exer- 
tion in plain duty all other good will come ; for in this 
direct contention with material evil, you will find out 
the real nature of all evil ; you will discern by the va- 
rious kinds of resistance, what is really the fault and 
main antagonism to good ; also you will find the most 
unexpected helps and profound lessons given, and truths 
will come thus down to us which the speculation of all 
our lives would never have raised us up to. You will 
find nearly every educational problem solved, as soon as 
you truly want to do something ; everybody will become 
of use in their own fittest way, and will learn what is 
best for them to know in that use. Competitive exam- 
ination will then, and not till then, be wholesome, 
because it will be daily, and calm, and in practice ; and 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS AETS. 183 

on these familiar arts, and minute, but certain and ser- 
viceable knowledges, will be surely edified and sustained 
the greater arts and splendid theoretical sciences. 

140. But much more than this. On such holy and 
simple practice will be founded, indeed, at last, an in- 
fallible religion. The greatest of all the mysteries of 
life, and the most terrible, is the corruption of even the 
sincerest religion, which is not daily founded on rational, 
effective, humble, and helpful action. Helpful action, 
observe ! for there is just one law, which obeyed, keeps 
all religions pure — forgotten, makes them all false. 
Whenever in any religious faith, dark or bright, we al- 
low our minds to dwell upon the points in which we 
differ from other people, we are wrong, and in the devil's 
power. That is the essence of the Pharisee's thanks- 
giving — " Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men 
are." At every moment of our lives we should be try- 
ing to find out, not in what we differ with other people, 
but in what we agree with them ; and the moment we 
find we can agree as to anything that should be done, 
kind or good, (and who but fools couldn't ?) then do it ; 
push at it together ; you can't quarrel in a side-by-side 
push ; but the moment that even the best men stop 
pushing, and begin talking, they mistake their pugnacity 



184 SESAME AND LILIES. 

for piety, and it's all over. I will not speak of the 
crimes which in past times have been committed in the 
name of Christ, nor of the follies which are at this hour 
held to be consistent with obedience to Him ; but I will 
speak of the morbid corruption and waste of vital power 
in religious sentiment, by which the pure strength of 
that which should be the guiding soul of every nation, 
the splendour of its youthful manhood, and spotless 
light of its maidenhood, is averted or cast away. You 
may see continually girls who have never been taught 
to do a single useful thing thoroughly ; who cannot sew, 
who cannot cook, who cannot cast an account, nor pre- 
pare a medicine, whose whole life has been passed 
either in play or in pride ; you will find girls like these 
when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate pas- 
sion of religious spirit, which was meant by God to 
support them through the irksomeness of daily toil, 
into grievous and vain meditation over t]ie meaning of 
the great Book, of which no syllable was ever yet to be 
understood but through a deed ; all the instinctive wis- 
dom and mercy of their womanhood made vain, and the 
glory of their pure consciences warped into fruitless 
agony concerning questions v/hich the laws of common 
serviceable life would have either solved for them in an 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 185 

instant, or kept out of their way. Give such a girl any- 
true work that will make her active in the dawn, and 
weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow- 
creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and 
the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform 
itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace. 

So with our youths. We once taught them to make 
Latin verses, and called them educated ; now we teach 
them to leap and to row, to hit a ball with a bat, and 
call them educated. Can they plow, can they sow, 
can they plant at the right time, or build with a steady 
hand ? Is it the effort of their lives to be chaste, 
knightly, faithful, holy in thought, lovely in word and 
deed ? Indeed it is, with some, nay with many, and the 
strength of England is in them, and the hope; but we 
have to turn their courage from the toil of war to the 
toil of mercy ; and their intellect from dispute of words 
to discernment of things ; and their knighthood from the 
errantry of adventure to the state and fidelity of a kingly 
power. And then, indeed, shall abide, for them, and 
for us an incorruptible felicity, and an infallible religion ; 
shall abide for us Faith, no more to be assailed by temp- 
tation, no more to be defended by wrath and by fear ; 
— shall abide with us Hope, no more to be quenched by 



186 SESAME AND LILIES. 

the years tliat overwhelm, or made ashamed by the 
shadows that betray ; shall abide for us, and with us, 
the greatest of these ; the abiding will, the abiding name, 
of our Father. For the greatest of these, is Charity. 



THE END, 



